Everybody you decline lives fifteen minutes away, so decline them well
- Looking for
- somebody who can be turned down gracefully and turn me down the same way
- Experience
- Five years, two arrangements, both short and both fine.
- Around
- the east, Amsterdam
There are two people on my usual route home who I unmatched. One of them I pass most weeks. We have never spoken and we recognise each other perfectly. It is not hostile. It is just the permanent, low level strangeness of a city where the queue and the street are the same place.
That has made me deliberate about how I decline anybody. One clear sentence, no explanation, no leaving somebody to work it out from silence, because silence is what turns a small no into a story a person tells themselves for a month.
Thirty two, the east, switch, five years in. I would ask for the same in return and I mostly do not get it. The standard behaviour here is to go quiet and then, if pushed, to be busy. I would honestly rather be told I am not what somebody is looking for while I am still eating dinner.
What I want is an arrangement that runs both ways, built over months rather than weeks, with somebody who is direct without being unkind. I lead in one context and follow in another and I will explain which properly rather than in a chat window.
Not looking for anybody who ghosts. Not looking for a person who needs a reason for everything. Not looking to be told the city is bigger than it is.