Four exes between us, all of whom we will see again next month

Between us we have four exes who will be at the same things we are at for the rest of our lives. We met inside this scene, which meant our first year was conducted in front of everybody who had known each of us separately, and there was a long stretch where we could feel the room deciding whether it approved.

Thirty nine and thirty seven, Salford, together five years. Being relaxed about the history took actual work and we would not want anybody to think it arrived naturally. There was a bad six months in year two where every social came with a subtext, and we got through it by talking about it in the car on the way home, every single time, until it stopped needing to be talked about.

Where we have ended up is genuinely easy. Both of us are on speaking terms with everybody. Nobody has left, nobody has been asked to. We can be in a room with all four of them and the only person who finds it noteworthy is whoever is watching to see whether we mind.

What we are looking for is friends who understand that this is simply what a small scene is, and who do not need the map explaining every time it comes up. Ideally people with their own tangle, because they will not find ours remotely interesting.

Not looking for a third or anything of that sort. Not available to anybody hoping to use us as a route towards somebody else's history, which has happened twice now and both times was extremely obvious.