A wrong impression, four years old, that the room has never revised

Four years ago I said something at a social that came out badly, to a woman who was upset about something else entirely, and about thirty people arrived at a settled view of me over the following fortnight. It was not a scandal. There was nothing to investigate. It was a wrong impression that set like concrete.

Thirty nine, out towards Bolton, fourteen years in. I apologised at the time, properly and in person, and she and I have been fine for years. She would tell you so herself. The room, however, does not update. A small scene forms an opinion once and then has no mechanism at all for revising it, because nobody is ever asked to.

The effect on dating is specific and dull rather than dramatic. A new person hears a version of it in their first month, from somebody who was not there, and I then spend an early evening explaining something that has no real shape, which makes me sound defensive whether or not I am.

So I am putting it here instead. If you want to ask somebody about me, ask her. If you want to ask me, I will tell you the whole thing once and then never again, because it is four years old and I have a life to be getting on with.

What I want is a partner who can hold a small uncertainty about a stranger's history without needing it settled by third parties. One person, over years. An evening a week. Somebody who arrives at their own view in their own time.