On the swiping model I had a conversation running every night of the week and not one of them ever arrived anywhere. On the community platform I had nothing at all for six months. Then two people, both of whom I have now known a year. I have stopped pretending that the choice of platform was a detail.
Thirty three, east London, submissive, four years in. What changed was not the people, it was what the place asks of you. One deals you faces and rewards a quick reaction. The other makes you exist somewhere, in public, over months, and only then does anybody bother to look properly. The second is slower and lonelier and better, and nobody warns you that the six months in the middle is the normal part.
What I want is an ongoing arrangement rather than an occasional one. Standing expectations, a check in that happens on ordinary weeks, correction that is spoken rather than staged. I am good at routine and poor at intensity in short bursts, which took me two failed attempts to work out.
I am not looking for somebody running this across four platforms at once and treating each of them as a queue. I am not looking to be talked into meeting the same week we start speaking, because the one time I did that I spent the evening being somebody's errand. And I am not going to spend another half year being visible without being read, so if you got this far, say something that proves it.