An hour out, and I will not pretend the drive is nothing

An hour and ten each way, sometimes considerably more, and I am always the one driving it because I am the one with a car. I have begun three things with people in the middle of the city and watched all three quietly die of the journey, which I now think was largely my own fault for insisting each time that it was no trouble.

It is trouble. Not enormous trouble, but the sort that accumulates. By month four I was doing all of the travelling and had begun to keep a private score, which is a horrible thing to catch yourself doing and a reliable sign that something was not said early enough.

Fifty, twenty years in, eleven of them with one woman who is now in Yorkshire and perfectly happy. What I am proposing is a fortnight rather than a week. Two long evenings a month, properly long, with time either side, rather than a rushed weekly thing that leaves us both irritable on the motorway. That shape works if both people actually want it and fails badly if one of them has agreed to it out of politeness.

I have a house with room in it and a spare bed, so coming out here is a genuine option rather than a favour.

Not looking for anyone who says distance is nothing, because it is something, and saying otherwise in month one is how the whole thing goes wrong in month five. Not looking for anything spontaneous. And not looking to relocate, since the house and the dog are settled.