Everything has to happen between ten in the morning and half past two
Looking for somebody whose weekday afternoons are genuinely free
Everything has to happen on a weekday between about ten in the morning and half past two. That is the shape of our life, it will not change for several years, and it removes roughly nine out of ten people who read this.
We have family at home and a house that is never empty in the evening. Nights out are rare and planned weeks ahead. What we do have is a genuinely empty middle of the day, two jobs with some control over their own hours, and a quiet street where nobody is around to notice anything.
Thirty nine and forty one, northern New Jersey, three years open. She dates, he is around for most of it, and the two of them are better at the logistics than either expected to be.
The daytime constraint filters for a particular kind of person and mostly in a good way. Shift workers, people who work for themselves, people who are between things. Nobody has ever managed it around an office job without lying to somebody, and we would rather not be the reason anyone starts.
What we want is somebody regular and unhurried, seen every few weeks, over a long time. Not looking for anyone who says the afternoon is fine and then proposes a Friday night in week three. Not looking for anyone who needs constant messaging in between. Not looking for anyone who finds the domestic ordinariness of all this disappointing, because it is the only version we have.
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