No, the marriage is not in trouble, and we are tired of the question
Looking for somebody who will not spend a month looking for the crack
The question arrives around the fourth message and it is always a version of the same one: so what is missing at home. Nothing is missing at home. That is precisely why we can do this without it costing us anything.
Fifteen years married, seven of them like this, both of us in our forties, Queens. We like each other enormously. We have a sturdy, faintly boring, quite funny marriage and this sits inside it rather than propping it up. If it stopped tomorrow we would be a little sad and entirely fine.
We mention it because a lot of men arrive with a theory. They are gentle about it, they hint, and eventually there is a message asking whether he is really all right with this, which is not an unkind question the first time and is exhausting by the fifth. He is really all right with it. He was the one who could not stop thinking about it for three years before he said a word.
What we want is one person, occasionally, over a long stretch. Somebody who enjoys her company for its own sake and does not need a wound underneath it.
Not looking for anyone who wants to rescue anybody. Not looking for anyone who reads a settled marriage as a challenge. Not looking for anyone who cannot cope with the fact that after an evening out she comes home, tells her husband about it, and the two of them go to sleep perfectly happy.
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