If you are in the middle of a crisis I am the wrong woman

I have twice taken on a man who was in the middle of something. A collapsing marriage the first time and a job loss with everything attached to it the second. Both times I told myself that structure would help, and both times what actually happened was that I became the emergency service for somebody's whole life and the arrangement stopped being an arrangement.

Neither of them behaved badly. That is the part worth saying. They were decent men in bad years and they needed something I was not able to be. I now recognise it early and step back, and I am told this reads as cold.

Thirty six, the commuter belt, ten years leading. I work long hours in something demanding and I have a life that is already full, which is exactly why I want this and exactly why I cannot carry somebody else's.

What I want is a man whose life is standing up. Employed or content, housed, with friends who are not me and a doctor if he needs one. On that footing I can offer a real structure, standing expectations, service that matters and years rather than months.

What I am not is a rescue, a therapist or a project, and I would rather write that plainly than have somebody find it out at the point when he most needs help and I have nothing to give. If you are in a bad year, I hope it ends. Write to me in the next one.