The app showed me somebody I had already met, seven years on
- Looking for
- somebody willing to be surprised by who they turn out to be later
- Experience
- Twelve years, three dynamics, one of them twice with the same person.
- Around
- north of the river, London
In February a face came up that I recognised immediately and could not place, and then could. We had met through one of these things seven years ago, been mildly wrong for each other, and parted without any fuss. Neither of us is remotely the same person now. She is doing something entirely different with her life and so am I, and the conversation we had this spring bore no resemblance to the one we had then.
Forty seven, north of the river, switch, twelve years in, and one arrangement that happened twice with a long gap in the middle.
It did not become anything this time either, which is not the point. The point is that this board is full of people writing off whole categories of person on the basis of one bad experience, and the app encourages it by making a decision feel permanent. People change completely and the machine has no way to tell you that.
What I want is an arrangement with structure, in either direction, ongoing rather than occasional, with somebody who wants the same for years rather than months.
Not looking for anybody who has a fixed theory about what people my age want. Not looking to be judged on a version of me from before. And if we have spoken before and it went nowhere, write anyway.