Couples · the Bronx, New York
One of us wants a scene and one of us wants a locked door
Pinned as disagree_how_public
- Wants
- couples who have found a workable version of this exact disagreement
- Rope so far
- Eight years together, and an unresolved argument about visibility.
- Around
- the Bronx, New York
She wants to know people. She wants a circle, a regular evening, friends who understand the subject without an explanation. I want a locked door, two people, and for nobody at all to know. We have been having this argument for about three years and neither of us is wrong.
This city makes it worse rather than better. Because there are several separate scenes here, she can point out entirely reasonably that we could be involved somewhere far from anybody either of us knows. And because there are several, I can point out that word still moves, just unpredictably, and that I have watched it happen to a friend.
We are thirty eight and forty, the Bronx, together eight years and doing this for six of them. The rope itself is not in dispute. We agree completely about that and always have.
What we are looking for is other couples who have had this argument and found something workable. Not a verdict on who is right. The specific arrangements: what one partner does alone, what gets reported, how the private one stops feeling like an obstacle to the sociable one.
Not looking for a third or anything resembling one. Not looking to be recruited into a group, since that is precisely the thing under discussion. And not looking for anybody who is going to tell one of us to be braver, which has been said and did not help.