Divorced eighteen months, and this is the thing I never said

My marriage ended eighteen months ago for reasons that had nothing to do with this, which is a sentence everybody writes and which happens to be true. We were twenty two years married and I never told her, and I am not entirely sure why not, except that the moment to say it never arrived and after about year four it seemed absurd to bring up.

Forty nine, Didsbury, in a rented flat that is the first place I have lived alone since I was twenty five.

No experience at all. I have read a good deal in the last year, which taught me the vocabulary and nothing whatever about what to do on an ordinary evening. I have been to nothing. I know nobody.

What I am asking for is patience and instruction. Somebody content to go slowly, who will explain what she wants and why, and who is not going to be disappointed that I turn up with nothing. I expect to be embarrassed for the first several months and I would rather be worked through that than reassured about it.

I would also like, eventually, to be told I have done something properly, which is an odd thing to advertise for and is nonetheless the truest sentence here.

What I do not want is anybody who finds a late start charming. And I would rather not discuss the marriage. It was mostly good, it is over, and it is not the interesting thing about me.