I did the helpful thing for two years and it warped everything

I did it for about two years, willingly and without complaint, and I stopped in the spring. Not because anybody was ungrateful. Because I noticed that every new person in my life had arrived as somebody I was helping, and that the shape of that never entirely goes away afterwards, however well things go.

Forty one, the city centre, seventeen years in. Two of those turned into relationships and both carried the same fault line down the middle. One of us had turned up to learn and the other had turned up to be useful, and neither of us ever fully stepped out of those positions, even four years in, even while arguing about the washing up.

So I am not doing it any more, and the requests still arrive most weeks, and I would like this post to serve as the standing answer. It is not modesty, it is not gatekeeping, and it is certainly not a comment on beginners, who are frequently the best company in any room.

What I am after is a partner: somebody who arrives as an equal in the whole of life that is not rope, whatever their experience is in the part that is. I would happily be with somebody who started last month. I would not want to be the reason they started.

Not looking for anything with a curriculum in it. Not looking for somebody who wants a mentor and quietly hopes it becomes a relationship, since I have now watched that fail twice from the inside and would rather not make it three.