I joined the sort of platform you join rather than swipe, and for six months absolutely nothing happened. No messages, no interest, no sign that a single person had read anything. I had arrived from a product that handed me somebody new every evening, so the silence felt like a punishment. It was not. It was the model working exactly as designed, and nobody had described the shape of it to me first.
Thirty eight, Queens, submissive. The six months went on what that place actually rewards, which is being present. Answering things. Being wrong in public and saying so. It accumulates slowly and there is no way to hurry it.
In month seven two people wrote within a fortnight, both having read a great deal first, one of whom I have now known a year. That ratio would look catastrophic on any dashboard and it has been the best year I have had.
What I want now is an ongoing structured arrangement with somebody unhurried. Weekly, service led, expectations that hold on ordinary days.
Not looking for anybody who wants to move fast in order to prove something. Not looking for a person who is also running a fast platform and treating me as the patient option. And not looking to go back to being handed a stranger every night, because that was company and it was not connection.