Switches · out towards Bolton, Manchester
The edge of this city is not the city, and somebody has to drive
Pinned as one_of_us_drives
- Wants
- an honest answer about the journey, of any kind, at the start
- Rope so far
- Eight years, three partnerships, all three dead by month five.
- Around
- out towards Bolton, Manchester
Forty minutes on a good evening and well over an hour on a bad one, and somebody has to do that twice a week, and it is worth being honest at the top about who it will be. It has always been me. Three times now, and all three ended somewhere in the region of month five.
Thirty three, out towards Bolton, eight years in. The city assumes everybody lives inside it. Posts say an evening a week as though the evening were the entire cost, and for a person in the centre it is. For me it is the evening plus two and a half hours in the car plus being no use at all on Thursday morning.
I am not asking anybody to move and I am not asking to be pitied for living where I can afford to live. I am asking for the journey to be counted as part of the arrangement rather than read as proof of enthusiasm. That might mean you come out here sometimes. It might mean one long evening a fortnight instead of two short ones a week. Both of those work.
What does not work is a promise made in month one that you will happily drive out, followed by not driving out, followed by both of us being awkward about it. I would far rather hear at the start that you will never leave the city. That is a completely reasonable position and I can plan around it.
One partner, both directions, over years. There is a house out here with room in it, which counts for something.