Eight years with one person, and I only speak his version of this

I learned all of this from one man across eight years, and I did not understand until he had gone that what I had learned was a dialect rather than a language. His shorthand. His order of doing things. The particular phrase he used to ask whether I was all right, which I answered without thinking for the best part of a decade and which nobody else on earth says.

Thirty four, south east. Not a beginner, and not experienced in any way that carries over cleanly. The first time I was with somebody else I got everything slightly wrong, in ways neither of us could name at the time, and we both went home puzzled.

So what I am after is somebody willing to build a shared way of doing things from scratch rather than assuming I already have one. That means more talking than my experience would suggest is necessary, and it means I will occasionally say something odd because it was normal in the house I came from.

I would also say, in fairness to him, that eight years with one attentive person is not a bad education. I know my own body extremely well and I am very quick to say when something has changed. It is the social half I am missing.

Not looking for anyone who wants to hear about the ending. Not looking for a person who will be competitive with a man he has never met. And not looking for something casual, since eight years of one thing has clearly not left me suited to it.