Switches · Salford, Manchester
Eleven years married to somebody who has never once been curious
Pinned as he_is_not_worried
- Wants
- one long rope partnership, joining something that already has terms
- Rope so far
- Eight years, both ends, all of it alongside a settled marriage.
- Around
- Salford, Manchester
The thing nobody tells you about a marriage where one of you does this and the other does not is how much talking it takes. Not one large permission conversation early on. Dozens of small dull ones, spread across years, mostly about calendars and who is in on Thursday, and if you stop having them the whole arrangement quietly rots from the middle.
Forty, Salford, married eleven years, doing this for eight of them, both ends of the rope. He tried it twice at the beginning, felt nothing whatsoever, and has been entirely relaxed ever since. Relaxed is not the same as automatic. We revisit it roughly twice a year, on purpose, while nothing is wrong, because the version of that conversation you have when something is wrong is a different and much worse conversation.
What that means for anybody I might see is that they would be joining something with a shape already in place. There are terms. They are not onerous, I will say all of them inside the first week, and none of them is designed to hold anybody at a distance.
What I am looking for is one long rope partnership. Not an evening, not a rota, not a slot. Somebody I know properly over years, both directions, who is content to be an important person in my life rather than the central one, and who actually means that rather than hoping.
Not looking for a partner who would rather nobody at home knew. Not looking for somebody quietly waiting for a marriage to fail. And not looking for a partner who needs me to be resentful at home, because I am not.