Rope bottoms · the east, London
The difference between a practice partner and a partner, plainly
Pinned as not_a_practice_partner
- Wants
- a relationship with rope in it, not a slot in somebody's training week
- Rope so far
- Five years, four practice partnerships, no relationship out of any of them.
- Around
- the east, London
I have been somebody's Wednesday for five years. Four different people, all decent, all clear from the start that this was practice and not a relationship, and I agreed every time because I wanted the rope and told myself the rest would arrive later. It never arrived. Not once, with any of them.
So here is the plain version, which I now put in the first message rather than the fifth. A practice partner is someone you work with. A partner is someone who knows what your week has been like, notices when you have gone quiet, and would still want to see you on an evening when neither of you fancies tying anything. Both are legitimate. They are not the same, and one does not turn into the other by being patient.
Twenty nine, east London, five years in and reasonably good at my end of it. I have nothing against practice as an arrangement. What I am against is being told it is a step towards something by a person with no intention of taking the step, and then being the one who looks naive when I mention it.
What I would like is somebody whose week has room in it for a person rather than a session. Somebody who would rather see the same body improve over two years than tick off a list.
Not looking for a slot. Not looking for someone whose calendar is already full of other arrangements and who wants to fit me into the gap. And not looking to be told I have confused rope with romance, because I have not confused anything.