I am here for the boring years, having had them once already

I had nine years of the ordinary version once and did not know what I had until it was over. Not the beginning, which I barely remember. The middle: a Wednesday where nothing needed discussing, a shorthand that took four years to build, long stretches where neither of us could have told you what we did last week because it had all run together into one thing.

Forty, the south, and that partnership ended three years ago for reasons that were nobody's fault and are not interesting to anybody.

What I have found since is that everything on offer is the first part. Meeting, finding out, the early months when it is all novel. People here are very good at that and there is a great deal of it available, and I have done it twice more and found it thin both times.

I switch and have for a long time. What I am asking for is somebody who wants the long unremarkable stretch, and who understands that you have to get through the interesting bit first in order to reach it. I am prepared to be patient about that. I am not prepared to keep restarting. There is a particular tiredness that comes of being interesting to a new person for the fourth time, and I have it.

If you have had a partnership that ran a decade, you already know exactly what I am describing and this post has been unnecessary.