I was the husband for nineteen years and it is the only unusual thing about me
Looking for a couple who would find a former husband's view of it useful
For most of my marriage I was the man at home. Nineteen years, the last eleven of them open, and I know exactly what a Thursday evening feels like from the far end of a house. We ended for reasons entirely unrelated to any of it, amicably enough, and I have been on this side for two years.
I mention it not as a credential but because it is the one thing I have that the other men here do not. I know what the husband is thinking at eight in the evening. I know which reassurances are useful and which are patronising. I know the difference between a man who agreed and a man who wanted.
Fifty one, the north shore. Two arrangements since, one of six months and one still running at a low level, both with couples who talk to each other properly. Being on this side has been stranger than I expected. Nineteen years of watching from inside the house does not prepare you at all for being the one who is decided about.
What that knowledge buys you in practice is that I write to both people, always, and that if I think the husband is going along with something for the sake of peace I will say so out loud rather than take the evening and hope. I have been that man. Somebody should have said it to me around year four and nobody did.
I am not offering counselling and I will not be anybody's expert on their own marriage. I am a man who has stood in that particular kitchen and will not pretend otherwise to seem uncomplicated.
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
Answering as a couple means screening him together rather than one of you doing it privately. Start here.
- Screening a third as a couple, not alone
- The six things to agree before you answer anyone
- Rules that survive contact with a real evening