Riggers · the city centre, Manchester
Three or four months before anything, and I am not changing it
Pinned as slower_than_the_room
- Wants
- somebody who reads a slow start as the point rather than a test
- Rope so far
- Ten years, three partnerships, every one of them slow to begin.
- Around
- the city centre, Manchester
Months. Three or four of them, usually, before anything at all happens, and somebody at a social described that to me last year as a bit much. He meant it kindly. I am not changing it, and I would rather explain why here than in a first conversation where it comes out sounding like a test I have set.
Thirty five, the city centre, ten years in. The reason is not general caution about strangers. It is that the thing I actually enjoy only exists once two people know each other properly, and everything before that is a sort of polite approximation which I find quite boring and always have.
So the first months with me are a lot of ordinary time. Meals, walks, long conversations about things with no rope in them anywhere. I want to know what you are like when a week goes badly and whether anybody ever hears about it.
In a scene this size a pace like that is visible, and people draw conclusions. Some read it as a lack of interest. One person decided I must be seeing somebody else, which I was not, and it took four months for that to fade. I have stopped explaining myself in the room and started saying it in writing instead.
The thing waiting at the far end of all that patience is a partnership that runs for years, and in my experience the patience is exactly why it does.