I met somebody on an ordinary dating product last autumn, and four weeks in she told me, carefully and with obvious effort, what she actually wanted. I said the wrong thing. Not cruel, just useless, because I had never thought about any of it and had nothing to offer except surprise. That conversation ended us, and it has been running in my head every week since.
Forty five, the Jersey side, still working it out, separated two years, no experience beyond that one evening.
What I did afterwards was go looking for where such a conversation is supposed to happen, which is how I discovered there are several kinds of platform and that the general one we were both on is the only kind with no room for it whatsoever. She had done a brave thing in the wrong building and I was the wrong man standing in it.
So I have read for eight months and I am writing here. What I want is to have that conversation properly this time, with somebody who does not need me to be finished. I think I want to lead. I am not going to state it as a fact.
Not looking to find her again, which would be absurd and unwelcome. Not looking for anybody who wants a man with a settled position on all of it. And not looking to be a project, though I am aware I have written a post that rather invites one.