In the same fortnight I met two people. One had come off the fast kind of platform, suggested meeting in two days, and could not understand why I wanted a phone call first. The other had come off the slow kind and had a two month correspondence in mind before anything else was discussed. Neither of them was wrong. They had each been taught what normal looks like by a different piece of software.
Forty, south east, switch, fourteen years in. I now state my pace in a first message, which sounds fussy and has saved me an enormous amount of time.
The pace I want is about three weeks. Enough writing to know whether somebody is real and whether I like the way they think, then a call, then an hour in daylight with nothing attached to it. After that I move quite fast, because by then I know.
What I want is ongoing and either direction with the right person, weighted towards leading.
Not looking for a correspondence as a hobby, which is a real thing people do and is fine, just not for me. Not looking to meet a stranger the same week we start talking. And not looking for anybody who treats a stated pace as an opening bid to be negotiated down, which has happened twice and both times told me everything I needed.