Forty two, moved south for work, complete beginner at this

I moved down eighteen months ago for a job, I live out past where the trains get quiet, and I know precisely nobody. What I do have is two years of reading about something I have wanted since my twenties and have never once done.

Forty two, and I want to be careful about how I put the next part. I am not looking for a teacher in the sense of someone who takes on beginners and moves them along. I am looking for a relationship, with a person who happens to be further into this than I am, who is willing to be patient for however long it takes me to stop being useless. Those two things get confused constantly and the confusion has cost me two promising conversations already.

I am precise about most things and I expect to be precise about this. I would like to talk first, at length, somewhere ordinary and public, about what a week with rope in it actually looks like. Not the interesting part. The dull part: how often, where, who else is involved, what happens when one of us is tired.

What worries me is being somebody's project. I have watched that happen to a friend in an entirely different context and the enthusiasm ran out at about month five, which is roughly when she had become dependent on it.

Not looking for anything that starts with photographs. Not looking for a weekend course of instruction with a person attached. And not looking for someone who will find my age at the start of this either charming or tragic.