I ended a good five year partnership and the room decided why

Nothing was wrong, which is the part nobody will accept. Five years, no cruelty, no dishonesty, nobody else involved. It had simply become a routine that we were both maintaining out of decency, and I ended it in the spring, and I have spent every month since being handled gently by people who have decided there must be a reason I am not giving.

There is not. That is the reason. A good thing had turned into a schedule, neither of us had wanted anything in particular for about a year, and I noticed first and said so out loud.

Forty four, the south, seventeen years. The scene here is small enough that a version of the story existed within a month. It is not a hostile version. It is a sympathetic one about him, which is worse, because it means everybody is being kind to me on a false basis and I cannot correct it without sounding like exactly the person in the story.

I switch. What I want is a partnership over years with somebody who understands that ending something well is not a character defect. I would rather have five good years and a clean finish than eight and a slow one.

I would also quite like to talk to somebody who does not already know the story, which in this city means either somebody fairly new or somebody who does not gossip, and I am no longer sure which of those is rarer.