I moved here with twenty years behind me and none of it counted

I led for twenty years somewhere else and arrived here two years ago knowing nobody at all, and I have since discovered exactly what the men on this board keep writing about. Not a soul in this city could say a word about me. Twenty years and three long arrangements, and I might as well have started in the spring.

Forty three, the city centre, twenty two years leading, three arrangements and the longest of them eleven years.

What I have learned is that it cuts both ways and nobody ever says so. Everybody writes about the man who cannot be checked. Nobody mentions that a woman arriving from elsewhere cannot be checked either, and that a sensible man ought to be every bit as careful about me as I am about him. Two have been, and I thought considerably better of both of them for it.

So I will tell you who could speak for me, and I would rather you asked. What I want is a long domestic arrangement, duties across an ordinary week, a fixed day, and standards I set and hold to.

Nothing for hire, no money in either direction, no exceptions to either. What I do not want is a man who assumes a woman is safe by default, because that is a poor habit and it will hurt him with somebody else eventually.