Almost nothing I want happens in a bedroom and men find that odd

When I describe what my arrangements actually consist of, men are visibly disappointed about a third of the time, and I would rather cause that disappointment in a post than in the fourth week.

It is a list of jobs. Groceries on Thursday. The building paperwork I loathe. Cooking twice a week. The laundry that goes out and comes back. Anything involving a phone call to an institution. He does them, on a schedule, and I check, and when something is not right he does it again. That is the arrangement. It is not a prelude to something and there is no second half.

Thirty six, the Bronx, eight years leading. What I get from it is not domestic convenience, though I will not pretend that is nothing. It is that somebody has organised a genuine part of his week around what I want, week after week, for years, and continues to do it on the days when neither of us is in the mood. That is worth more to me than any amount of theatre.

What I want is a man who reads the list and finds it appealing rather than tolerable. In my experience they exist and they are outnumbered by the ones who assume it is a stage.

Nothing about it is professional. Nothing is paid for. This is a woman looking for somebody to be genuinely useful to her, which is both less dramatic and much harder to find than the alternative.