I have read my first attempt back and I would not have answered it either

I keep everything I send. Last month I read back the first thing I ever wrote to a woman on a board like this and I had to put my phone down. It was two hundred words about what I hoped would happen, addressed to nobody in particular, ending with a question about whether she was interested. I would not have answered it either.

Thirty six, northern quarter, two years of this and not one reply in twenty something attempts.

What I have worked out from rereading all of them is that they get progressively less bad and they are all making the same error. Every one is about the thing I want rather than about the person I am writing to or the man I actually am. I could swap the names between them and lose nothing, which is exactly the complaint every woman on this board makes.

So this post is my attempt at the opposite. I am a joiner. I work with my hands, I am out of the house by six, and the part of my life I would most like somebody else to have authority over is what happens between six in the evening and bed, which at the moment is nothing much.

What I want is a structured arrangement with real tasks and somebody who checks.

What would help me most is somebody willing to say plainly what is wrong with how I write. I have had two years of silence and it has taught me almost nothing.