I want months of talking first, and couples read that as indifference

Twice now a couple has told me at the end that they had assumed I was not really interested, and both times the evidence was identical: I had not suggested meeting quickly enough. I had been writing happily for six weeks, and six weeks of happy writing had been read as a man passing the time.

I do not know how to fix that except by putting it in the post. Thirty six, Kreuzberg, five years in. I want months of conversation before anything happens, and the reason is neither caution nor shyness. It is that the arrangements I have valued were the ones where we already had a shorthand before the first evening, and a shorthand cannot be manufactured in a fortnight.

The two that worked both took about half a year to start and then ran for years afterwards. The one that started in a fortnight lasted three weeks and I remember almost nothing about it, including, embarrassingly, what either of them did for a living.

So if you write and I do not propose a drink in week two, that is me being interested. If I ask you something odd about your life in week five, that is also me being interested. The signal you want is that I keep writing, because I am not a man who keeps writing to people he is indifferent about.

I know this makes me a poor fit for couples with limited patience for preamble, and there are plenty of those here. Fair enough. I am posting for the few who read the opening and felt relieved.