She said I came on too strong and I have spent a year working out how

A woman told me last summer that I came on too strong, and then, unusually, she told me what she meant, and I have been chewing on it ever since. It was not the length of my messages or the frequency. It was that I kept offering things. Every message contained another thing I would do, and the effect, she said, was of somebody pushing a pile of gifts across a table before anyone had sat down.

She was right. I did it because I was frightened of being uninteresting, and the fear made me loud.

Twenty eight, the west, four years in and nothing yet that has lasted past a second month. This year I have been practising the opposite. Answer what was asked. Do not add. Do not volunteer a service nobody requested. It is surprisingly hard and it has made my messages shorter and, I think, better.

What I want is an arrangement that builds over months rather than being agreed in a fortnight. I would like to be given one thing to do and to do it well before anybody discusses the second thing.

What would help me most is a woman who will say when I am doing it again, because I do not always notice from inside. What would not help is being told I should relax. I am relaxed. I am simply eager, which is a different fault, and I am working on it in the only way I know, which is slowly.