It has never been the people. It has always been the building

Three times now I have started something with a person I genuinely liked and watched it fold, and not once was it about compatibility or limits or anything anybody would recognise as a reason. It was a ground floor flat with a shared entrance. It was a mother in law upstairs who visits without warning. It was a housemate who works from the kitchen table and has never once gone out.

Thirty three, west London, five years in. I have come to think that in this city the practical question decides more relationships than the emotional one does, and that almost nobody raises it early because it sounds unromantic.

So I am raising it early. Where would this actually happen, how often, and who else would know about it. My own answer: I have a flat, it is small, the walls are thin, and one evening a week is realistic if my neighbour is out, which she often is. That is not much and it is honest.

What I would like is somebody who treats this as a joint problem to be solved rather than something to be embarrassed about. The couples I know who have lasted are the ones who sat down and worked out the arrangements early instead of hoping.

Not looking for anyone who says it will be fine and has not thought about it. Not looking for something that only happens at other people's evenings. And not looking to be told I am unromantic, which I have been told, by somebody I then never saw again for exactly these reasons.