I lead with what I will not do and I think it costs me replies

I put my limits in the first message. Every time. I have been told this is off putting, presumptuous and a bit rude, and I have thought about it seriously and I am still doing it, so I may as well explain myself in public.

Thirty six, the west, seven years in. Here is the reasoning. The alternative is four weeks of pleasant conversation followed by an awkward evening where it turns out the whole thing was never going to work, and I have had that evening three times. It is worse. It wastes her time far more than mine, because she has forty of these conversations running and I have one.

So: no pain of any kind, ever. Nothing that leaves a mark. Nothing involving anybody else in the room. Those are not negotiating positions, they are not squeamishness that will soften with familiarity, and they have not moved in seven years.

What is left is a great deal. Service, protocol, rules that run through a week, correction that is verbal and cold rather than physical, and being genuinely useful in somebody's household. The one arrangement I have had that worked ran three years on exactly that and neither of us ever felt anything was missing.

If a list of limits in a first message reads to you as a man telling you what to do, I understand, and we would not have suited each other. If it reads as somebody saving you a month, write back.