I was in this from two thousand and nine and the language has moved

I was in the middle of all this between about two thousand and nine and two thousand and fourteen. Then I met somebody who was not interested, and I put it away, and it stayed away for ten years, and now I am divorced and forty four and standing in front of the box again.

The strange part is how much has changed. Half the words people use I have had to look up. The way negotiation happens now is better than it was and I am glad of it, but it does mean I arrive with experience that is partly out of date, which is a worse starting position than arriving with none, because I do not always know which of my instincts are the old ones.

The east, four months back, moving deliberately slowly. I have been to two things and mostly listened, and both times I heard someone use a term I would once have used differently.

What I want is a woman who does not mind that I am half a beginner and half not. Some things I know in my body and will never need explained. Others I will get wrong in ways that are fifteen years stale and I will need telling, ideally without being made to feel like a museum piece about it.

I am not looking for anything fast, I am not looking to discuss my marriage, and I am not looking for someone who thinks the old way was better. It was not.