We did this in another city in our thirties and stopped for fifteen years

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.

Fifty and forty eight, the inner west, three months back into it. What has changed is everything procedural. The vocabulary is different. People negotiate properly now, which is an enormous improvement and slightly embarrassing to say out loud, because it means we did it badly for four years and thought we were fine.

What has not changed is that we still want the same shape: one man, known well, over a long stretch, seen regularly, treated as a person rather than an arrangement.

There is one specific thing we would like from whoever answers, which is a little patience with the parts we are getting wrong. We arrive with experience that is half useful and half obsolete. Correct us. Neither of us will be offended by somebody younger explaining something we ought to know already.

Not looking for anybody who finds two people our age doing this charming, because there is a way of saying that which is not a compliment at all. Not looking to be anybody's first, since two sets of nerves in one room is a great deal of nerves.