I wrote one message for ending things and I send it every time
- Looking for
- somebody who will do me the same courtesy when they decide
- Experience
- Eight years, three dynamics, two of them ended by me, badly at first.
- Around
- the east, London
It is four sentences. It says that I have enjoyed talking, that I do not think this is going to become what I am looking for, that it is not about anything they did, and that I wish them well. I wrote it two years ago after realising I had let five conversations rot rather than say anything, and I now send it every time. Nobody has ever been unpleasant about receiving it. Two people thanked me.
Thirty five, the east, switch, eight years in, three arrangements and a period of being genuinely rude by omission.
The thing that surprised me is how much easier it made everything else. Once you can end something in four sentences you stop being frightened of starting things, and the whole board becomes less exhausting.
What I want is a single arrangement rather than several: either direction, real structure, a weekly rhythm, expectations that are actually agreed out loud. I lead about as often as I do not and I am fairly good at both by now.
Not looking for anybody who disappears rather than saying a sentence. Not looking for a conversation that stays alive for a year without going anywhere. And if you send me the equivalent of my four sentences, you will get nothing back but a thank you.