Two second marriages, two sets of scar tissue, one new set of rules
Looking for somebody who understands that our rules were expensive
We each came out of a first marriage that ended for entirely different reasons, and when we began building this we found we had brought incompatible instincts to it. Mine came from a marriage that ended in secrets, so I want everything said out loud the moment it exists. His came from one that ended in daily interrogation, so being asked to account for himself makes him close like a door.
Working out how to have honesty without surveillance took the better part of a year and two genuinely bad weeks. What we arrived at is that either of us can ask anything once and get a full answer, and then it is not raised again unless something has changed. It reads as simple. It was not simple.
Forty one and forty, Prenzlauer Berg, together four years and open for three. Two arrangements, one of which ran eighteen months and ended when he took a job in another country.
The reason any of this is in the post is that our rules will look arbitrary from outside and they are not. Every one of them is there because it fixed something specific. If you ask why we do a particular thing you will get a long answer and rather more history than you were expecting.
We would like one man, seen regularly, who has been round this long enough to have rules of his own. I do not want to be anybody's first attempt. I have done my share of teaching in this life and I am done with it.
Before the first drink Replying goes through the connected platform, so nothing about you is shared until you decide to share it. Take contact slowly and keep identifying details back until trust is earned. Meet somewhere public the first time, with your own way home from it, and if you are a couple then go together. Tell someone outside it where you are going. Never send money to someone you have not met. And if a post or a reply reads wrong, flag it rather than talking yourself out of the feeling.
Before you answer a post like this
Two people wrote this together, and both of them have to say yes to you. These are the three written for the man on the other end of it.
- What makes a single man read as safe
- Vetting a couple: the screening men skip
- The first meeting: a drink, all three of you