For a year I replied to everybody, and it nearly finished me
- Looking for
- a small number of conversations that go somewhere
- Experience
- Six years, three arrangements, one of them excellent.
- Around
- the eastern suburbs, Sydney
I decided, for reasons that seemed principled at the time, that I would answer every message I received. Everybody deserves a reply, nobody should be left wondering, all of that. I kept it up for about a year and it took over my evenings entirely, because a reply produces another message, and forty replies produce forty conversations, none of which I had time to actually have.
By the end I was writing at length to people I had no interest in, out of guilt, while the two conversations I genuinely wanted sat unanswered for days. That is not courtesy. It is a slower way of neglecting everybody.
Thirty eight, eastern suburbs, switch, six years in, three arrangements, and one of those was the best relationship of my life.
Now I answer a few and I answer them properly, and I send one clear line to anybody I am not going to pursue. That line has been taken badly perhaps twice and gratefully dozens of times. What I want is an ongoing arrangement that goes both ways, with somebody who also finds this app draining.
Not looking for volume. Not looking to be somebody's twelfth open conversation. And not looking for a person who thinks the polite thing is to simply stop replying, because it is not, it is just the cheapest thing.