I will ask about you, and I would rather you knew that in advance

If we get past a first exchange, I will ask about you. Not formally and not behind your back in any sneaky sense. I will mention your name to two or three women I trust and see whether anything comes back. In this city, something usually does, one way or the other.

I am telling you because doing it secretly would be the wrong way round, and because the men who react badly to being told tell me a great deal.

Forty eight, Stockport, seventeen years leading. I started doing this after an experience in twenty seventeen that I am not going to describe, except to say that three separate women knew something about that man and none of them had any reason to think I needed telling.

What I want in a reply is either nothing to find or an account of what there is. Everybody has something. A dynamic that ended badly, a person who thinks poorly of you, a period where you behaved less than well. I have all of those too. What I cannot work with is finding out from somebody else what you could have told me yourself.

What I am looking for is a long structured arrangement. Household duties, standing rules, one fixed evening and a great deal of ordinary contact around it.

What I do not want is a man who has never been anywhere near anybody and therefore cannot be checked at all. That is not disqualifying, but it means everything moves at a quarter of the speed and I want that understood.