I once offered a woman money and I am still ashamed of it

Four years ago I wrote to a woman who leads, and in my second message I offered to pay for her time. I thought I was being respectful. I thought I was acknowledging that her attention was worth something and that I was not entitled to it for nothing. She never replied, and she was entirely correct not to.

It took me most of a year to understand why. She had not advertised anything for sale. There was no price because there was nothing for hire. What I had actually done was look at a woman describing her own private life and treat it as a service counter, which is the precise thing this whole site keeps trying to explain to men like the one I was.

Thirty nine, the south east, and I am putting this in public because I think a fair number of men arrive here with the same confusion sitting quietly in their heads and no idea that it is a confusion.

I want an arrangement with no money in it in either direction. Not a token, not a gift as the price of an answer, not a standing anything. If somebody asks me for a figure at any point I will stop the conversation, and I will not feel clever about it, because I remember being on the other side of that.

What I do have is time, an ordinary amount of competence at ordinary things, and four years of thinking hard about a mistake.