Couples here spend longer on the finding than on anything that follows, and the reason is social rather than logistical: circles overlap more than a city this size should allow, and a third who turns out to know somebody's colleague is a problem Sydney produces easily. Screening is done by degrees, so expect a long correspondence and a first meeting arranged so that nothing else can happen at it, with faces held back until well after that. Nobody treats the caution as an insult. The inverted year matters mostly because January empties the place, and two months of careful groundwork can lose the thread while everybody is away.
Posts come from the inner west, the eastern suburbs, the north shore, the inner city and the western suburbs.
People say which side they are on early, because it decides who can realistically meet.
How the board is run
A post lands on a city board because the person who wrote it said they were somewhere near Sydney,
and that is the whole of what the city tells you. It is a reading board rather than a list
of people nearby. Everything on it is anonymous: no names, email addresses, phone numbers,
messaging handles, external profiles or photographs are published here, and none are asked
for. Nothing is for hire, so anything with a price on it comes off, as does anything
describing somebody who did not write it. Posts run for six weeks and then retire, and
each carries a flag. Posting and replying for real both happen through the connected
platform, where you decide what you share and when.
Couple seeking in Sydney
A couple looking for a third, together and on the same page.
The last time we did any of this there were no boards, no messages and no video calls. You met people through other people, it took months, and there was no way to check anything about anybody. We stopped when we moved here, for reasons that had nothing to do with wanting to, and then fifteen years went past the way they do.
the inner west·Four years in our thirties, fifteen years away, three months back.·
Looking for somebody who will not treat two people our age as a novelty
Everything we have had lasted between six weeks and four months, and every single one ended for the same reason, which is that it was never built to last longer. Nobody ever said so. It was in the shape of the thing from the first message onward. Two enthusiastic months, a slower third, and a fourth in which somebody stops replying quickly.
the eastern suburbs·Five years open. Six short things, none of which we wanted to be short.·
Looking for one man who is not in any hurry to get somewhere
Stage one is writing, and most of what arrives dies there because it was clearly written to nobody in particular. Stage two is a long phone call, and this is where the majority go, usually because a voice gives away in ten minutes what a paragraph can hide for a fortnight. Stage three is meeting in daylight with a hard stop on it. Stage four is meeting again. Nothing happens at any of the four.
the north shore·Seven years open. Three arrangements, the longest of them two years.·
Looking for one man who finds a long process reassuring rather than insulting
I am autistic. In practice that means I will ask what you want in plain words and answer the same way, and that I will not be running the parallel conversation of hints and implications that this board appears to operate on. I have been told this is blunt. It is not intended as bluntness. It is the only way I can be reliably accurate.
the western suburbs·Three years, one arrangement of two years, ended by their move.·
Looking for a couple who would rather be asked than guessed at
Their marriage ended in March and mine ended with it, in the sense that a thing I had been part of for five years stopped existing on a Tuesday afternoon during a phone call I was not really entitled to be on. Nobody had done anything wrong to me. I simply had no standing anywhere in it.
the eastern suburbs·Five years with one couple. Nothing since, until now.·
Looking for a couple who understand this can end from somewhere outside it
Two. One for five years, one for three, with a quiet gap in between, and if that sounds thin for nine years then we want very different things and there is no argument worth having about it. I have never wanted a range of people. I wanted one person, known properly, over years.
the north shore·Nine years open. Two men in all of that time.·
Looking for one man for a long stretch, and nothing resembling a rotation
There was no last conversation. There was an ordinary Sunday, a message about the following week that got a short reply, and then nothing, ever again. Not blocked, not unfriendly, simply gone. For eight months afterwards I checked my phone in a way I am not proud of and could not talk myself out of.
the eastern suburbs·Five years. Two arrangements, one of which never formally ended.·
Looking for somebody who will say the words out loud when it stops
I have read the books, the forums, the earnest essays and the two or three genuinely good pieces of writing on the subject, I disagree with most of it, and I have absolutely nobody in my life to say so to. My husband agrees with me, which is useless. The one friend who knows finds the whole area faintly alarming and changes the subject.
the eastern suburbs·Nine years in this. A great deal of reading and nobody to test it on.·
Looking for an argument with somebody well read, and nothing else whatsoever
Post your own in Sydney
The board does the reading half. A post of your own, read by people who are actually near
you, goes on the platform this site connects to, and you decide what is in it.
For a post at full length, the hand-written ones on the main board run longer than a board
entry ever does: a couple asking for one careful conversation, a single man in no hurry at all, and a hotwife searching with her husband beside her.
The other cities
The board runs in 21 cities, and each one reads its own way.