Riggers · the city centre, Manchester
Fifteen years here means everybody already has a version of me
Pinned as half_this_room
- Wants
- one partner for years, and somebody who forms their own view
- Rope so far
- Fifteen years, three long partnerships, all inside the same twenty people.
- Around
- the city centre, Manchester
It is not a boast and it is not an advantage. Fifteen years in one city means that anybody I might start something with has already been handed an account of me by somebody else, usually before we have spoken, and I have no say whatsoever in which account they got.
Forty, the city centre. Most of those accounts are probably fair. One or two come from people who were having a bad year at the same time I was having mine. There is nothing to be done about any of it, and the years I spent trying to correct the record were the least dignified of my adult life.
Practically it means I have to be patient with a particular kind of first conversation, the one where the other person is quietly checking what they were told against what is actually in front of them. That is entirely reasonable and I would do the same. I have got much better at not being wounded by it.
What I want is one partner, for years, an evening or two a week, and a relationship with enough of its own history that other people's version of me stops being the main source. I am tired of starting things. I would like to be four years into something.
Not looking for a partner who opens by telling me what they heard. Not looking for something that has to be visible to anyone. And not looking for a partner who will be uncomfortable every time we walk into a room where I know people, because that will be every room, indefinitely.