I say the awkward part in message one and it halves my replies
- Looking for
- the smaller number of people who are still there after the honest bit
- Experience
- Six years, two dynamics, one of them four years.
- Around
- the south side, Glasgow
I put the difficult part in the first message now. What I want, what I will not do, what my week actually looks like, and the thing about me that is inconvenient to admit. Roughly half of the people I write to do not answer. The half who do have already read the worst of it, which means nothing collapses in week six.
It took me four years to get here. Before that I did what everybody does, which is to be pleasant and vague and let the awkward parts arrive one at a time, spaced out, hoping that by the time they landed somebody would be invested enough not to mind. That is not honesty on a delay. It is a slower way of wasting two people's spring.
Thirty six, the south side, submissive, six years in, one dynamic that ran four years and ended when he became ill.
What I want is a weekly arrangement with standing rules and a proper review every few months. What I do not want is anything occasional, anything improvised, or anybody who thinks a difficult conversation is best had later.
Not looking for a person who agrees with everything I say. The last two who did were both quietly miserable and neither of them mentioned it until it was over.