Everybody we know thinks we are the dullest couple alive
Looking for a man who understands why we can never be spontaneous
At a party in March somebody described us, fondly, as the most settled people she knows. We have been doing this for ten years. I said something modest, my wife looked at the carpet, and in the car afterwards neither of us said a word about it for twenty minutes.
Forty six and forty five, the south of the city, both of us from here, both of us with the same friends we had at twenty two. That last part is the whole problem and the whole reason we are careful.
The double life is not glamorous. It is admin. It is remembering which version of a weekend you told to which person. It is a story about a hotel that has had to stay consistent for eleven years. It is my wife having a good evening and then not being able to be in a decent mood on the Thursday without inventing a reason for the mood. Nobody warns you that the tiring part is the bookkeeping.
We are not going to stop and we are not unhappy. We would just like the next person to understand that a Wednesday takes us about three weeks to arrange, and that if either of us is ever short in a message it is because somebody has walked into the room.
What we want is one man, ongoing, who is boring in the same specific way we are. If you have a busy life of your own, better. If you need to feel like a secret, you have the wrong couple, because we are extremely tired of secrets and cannot see a way round this one.
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