Couples · the city centre, Manchester
There is a note on our fridge about what other people may know
Pinned as what_the_room_knows
- Wants
- two or three friends we can be indiscreet with, having chosen them
- Rope so far
- Six years together, four of them doing this, all of it inside one small scene.
- Around
- the city centre, Manchester
There is a note on our fridge, written badly in about year two and revised twice since, and it sets out what other people are allowed to know about us. Writing it felt absurd at the time. It has since saved us at least four arguments and one friendship, and we now think it is the most useful thing we have ever done.
We are thirty eight and thirty six, together six years, the city centre. The reason it exists is that in a scene where the same twenty people are at everything, a couple who have not decided what is public will have it decided for them inside a week, usually by somebody who meant no harm at all.
The note is not dramatic. It says which of our friends know, what either of us may say if asked directly, that neither of us announces anything about the other, and that if something goes badly wrong between us we tell nobody for a fortnight. That last clause came in at the first revision and it is the one that has most earned its place.
What we are here for is other people who think about it the same way. Friends, principally. Somebody to have dinner with who will not repeat it. Possibly another couple who have their own version of the note and would enjoy comparing.
The whole point of the note, in the end, is that we get to choose who knows us. We would like to choose a few more people.