Back in the city after eleven years away and starting the address book again
Looking for a few people to know before anything else at all
I moved back in February after eleven years away and discovered that the people I knew here have scattered completely. Two went south, one died, and the rest have families and schedules and a polite distance I do not resent in the slightest.
Fifty three, Manhattan. Twelve years in this world, most of them somewhere else, where I had a circle that took a decade to build and dissolved in about a week when I left.
What I want first is people. Not a partner, not an arrangement, and I would rather not be asked about one for a while. I would like to know four or five people who understand the shape of my life and with whom I can spend an ordinary evening.
I am aware that a man of my age asking for friendship reads as either sad or strategic. It is neither. It is that I have already done the thing where you arrive somewhere new and go straight to looking for a connection, and it produced two years of meeting people I had nothing in common with beyond one subject.
I am good at dinners, hopeless in large rooms, and I can talk about almost anything for an hour. Not looking for a couple who need a third. Not looking to be introduced to anybody. Not looking for a group with rules and a name and a founder.
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
Nobody here is asking for a date, so none of this is about arranging one.
- What it is actually like, against what you imagined
- How to tell your partner you want this
- When there is no scene where you live