I met a great many people last winter and it was the wrong method

Last winter I decided to be systematic. I went to everything I could find across three separate circles, said yes to every introduction, and met somewhere over thirty people between October and March. It was the most social period of my adult life and it produced nothing at all, and by the end I was so tired of introducing myself that I could hear my own voice doing it.

Forty three, the Bronx, sixteen years in. The mistake, as far as I can work it out, is that this city lets you do that, and being able to do a thing is not a reason to. In a smaller place I would have had forty people to choose from and would have had to actually get to know some of them.

So this year I am doing the opposite. One conversation at a time, at length, before I meet anybody. It is slower and it has already been better.

I go both ways and have for most of those sixteen years. What I want is a long partnership with one person, at home, with a modest amount of going out.

Not looking for anybody who wants to meet quickly to see whether there is a spark, which is exactly the method I have just abandoned. Not looking for a wide social life. And not looking for somebody who is in the middle of doing what I did last winter, because I know how that ends.