I learned our arrangement was over from a word on her profile
- Looking for
- somebody who ends things in a sentence rather than in a settings menu
- Experience
- Six years, two dynamics, the second one three years.
- Around
- the inner city, Sydney
We had been quiet for about three weeks, which happens, and I was not worried. Then her profile came round in the stack with a different word above it and a new paragraph underneath describing what she was looking for, and I understood in about four seconds that whatever we had been doing had ended some time earlier without my being told.
I did not message her. There was nothing to say that would not have sounded like an accusation, and she had not done anything to me except handle an ending badly, which most of us do. What stayed with me was the medium. The app told me. A company's sorting algorithm delivered the news, at ten at night, in a queue, between two strangers.
Thirty four, the inner city, switch, six years in. Two dynamics, the second running three years, and it is the one I have just described.
What I want now is an arrangement with somebody who will say the difficult sentence out loud. That is genuinely near the top of my list, above almost everything else. I will do the same and I have done, twice, and both times it was horrible and correct. I go both ways, properly, and I want somebody who does too.
Not looking for a person who avoids conflict by going quiet. Not looking for anything that lives entirely in a chat window. And not looking to be managed.