Three people have left the country on me and I have stopped taking it personally
- Looking for
- somebody whose next two years are already decided
- Experience
- Nine years, four arrangements, three ended at an airport.
- Around
- the inner city, Sydney
Three of the last four arrangements I have had ended because the other person left, and none of them left me. One went home after a visa ran out, one took a job overseas, one moved back to be near her mother. Every ending was decent and none of them was about anything either of us had done, and I have finally stopped reading it as bad luck and started reading it as this city.
An enormous number of people here are on a clock. Two years, three years, until a contract ends, until the rent stops making sense. The app has no way of showing that and no reason to, since a profile is a snapshot and a snapshot cannot say I intend to be gone by autumn.
Forty seven, the inner city, dominant, nine years in.
So I ask, early, plainly, and without treating the answer as a deal breaker. If you know you are going, say so and we will decide together whether a year is worth having. Sometimes it very much is. What does not work is finding out in month eight, when everything has been built as though it were permanent.
What I want is a structured arrangement with somebody clear about their own next two years. Not looking for certainty, only honesty. Not looking to be a reason anybody stays. And not looking for a person who will not answer a practical question because it is unromantic.