Two large families in one city, and neither of them can ever know
Looking for a man for whom absolute discretion is a habit rather than a thrill
His mother rings on Sunday. My side is smaller and louder and arrives without warning. Between the two families there are something like forty people in this city, several of whom would not speak to us again, and one of whom would make it a matter for a considerably larger audience. This is not a fear we are working through. It is a fact we have built the whole thing around.
What it means in practice: nothing at our place, ever. Nothing on a Sunday. No photographs of any of us anywhere at all, including the kind only ever seen by two people, because that is exactly the kind that surfaces. No mention of any of it to anybody who knows either of our surnames.
Thirty six and thirty nine, the eastern suburbs, two years open. One arrangement of a year with a man who understood every line of the above without being told twice, and it finished when work took him interstate.
We are not miserable about the constraint. Some couples here have families who would shrug, and ours would not, and there is no version of this in which we run the experiment to find out for certain. The arrangement is worth having inside those limits. It would not be worth having at the price of my mother in law's last years.
If discretion is a thrill for you rather than a habit, please do not write. The men who were good at this found it boring.
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