I was one of the men sending the same letter to everybody

I want to confess the thing this board complains about most, because I did it for years and I know exactly how it happens. I wrote one very good letter about myself and sent it, with the name changed, to something close to forty women. Not one of them answered, and I told myself the board was dead.

It was not dead. I had simply written a letter that was about me and posted it at strangers, which is the same as shouting your own name in a room and wondering why nobody has introduced themselves.

Forty one, the west, six years of this and a year off after I finally understood what I had been doing. The thing that changed my mind was reading a post by a woman who described the pile she receives, and finding my own letter in her description almost word for word. It was not a pleasant afternoon.

Now I write one at a time. It takes an evening. Most of it is not about me at all, it is about what she said and whether I actually have anything to answer with. If the honest answer is nothing, I do not send it.

What I want is one dynamic, ongoing, with rules and a real place in somebody's week. What I do not want is to be forgiven for the forty letters. I am not asking for that. I am saying what I did so that a woman reading this knows I understand why she stopped opening them.