I ask one question first and it costs me most conversations

Nine years ago I spent four months seeing a woman who told me her husband knew about it. He did not. I found out in the way you would expect, badly and in public, and the part I still turn over is that I had never once tried to check, because checking felt insulting and was easier not to do.

So now I ask, early, and I ask in a form that cannot be satisfied with a reassurance. I want to hear from him, in his own words, before anything happens. Not a line inside a shared message that could have been typed by anybody. Him, saying what he thinks this is and what he wants out of it.

It costs me a lot of conversations. Some people are offended. Some go quiet. Several have agreed it is sensible and then never got round to it, which I have learned to read as an answer in itself. Forty, Prenzlauer Berg, eleven years in, and I have not had a bad ending since I started doing this.

I want to be clear that I am not accusing anybody. Almost every couple here is exactly what it says on the post. The check is not about you, it is about something that happened to me, and I would rather explain that than have it look like suspicion.

Otherwise: something ongoing and unhurried, with people whose lives are full enough that this is a part of it rather than a project. I can host and I keep my own counsel.