A favorite topic for media organizations on
slow news days, and only slightly less popular than the national obsession with comparing ourselves to America, is Toronto's love-hate relationship with the rest of the country.

It doesn't have to be this way.

While their families can replay all kinds of urban nightmares brought to them courtesy of CTV Globemedia, the best thing we can do to overcome this provincial gap is by hooking up with some of those girls and boys. Not just for people with a larger-than-life reputation or a hectic traveling schedule, getting together with that special someone outside the GTA can be all kinds of fun.

But wait, I can already hear people saying; why live in a city where you don't date the locals? I counter that I'm not advocating replacing our pool of single urbanites with out-of-towners; I'm talking about supplementing a familiar flavor with something new and interesting.

After all, it's easy to get stuck in a rut. Maybe you're on the cusp of everything that's new and exciting about this city and everyday is a wonderful opportunity to meet someone new from across town. Or maybe, like the rest of us, you're a little overworked and underpaid and you'd like to see someone outside of the smattering of local scenes you participate in.

Naturally, due the size of Toronto, a lot of the following points in favor of dating someone outside the city possibly apply to seeing someone inside the city as well but I would argue that they're easier to accomplish with the former. Besides this is about expanding your boundaries, not finding loopholes.

Seeing someone once a week or less stretches out that initial phase of getting-to-know-each-other; making it look less like a ice-cream sundae constructed by an eight year-old who thought it was a good idea to throw everything on there. Sometimes, less is more. Of course, the danger of sporadic visits is that you can spend too much time together when they do visit in an attempt to make up for lost time. Besides, you're not going to wait a week to see someone in the city if you really like them.

There's a lot of stuff going on in Toronto and doing it with someone who's not from here can often provide a refreshing perspective on what many of us take for granted. It's cool to be a tour-guide and for those of you on a nostalgia trip, it gives the opportunity to redo all the things you friends won't do with you.

Your respective groups of friends are kept largely separate, circumventing those awkward introductions, who-hangs-out-with-whom decisions and

Hell, pretty much everything is kept separate (at least until it gets serious). It's kind of like leading a double-life except you're not cheating on anyone and you can incorporate as much or as little of what your existing routine as you like.

No more visiting family when you need a vacation but can't afford to go abroad. Just pop over to their neck of the woods for some much-needed rest and relaxation. Even if it is Hamilton.

And if things don't work out, you'll probably never have to see them again so you can always go back to doing all of the regular things you do without worrying about running into them at your local on Tuesdays.

Whether you look at this as a call for greater provincial unity or an opportunity to see whether the grass is truly greener on the other side, it'll probably be good times for all those involved and, at the very least, you'll be making liars out of all of those fools who say Toronto can't see beyond its own city limits.