I ended a seven year habit, and the room reached its own verdict

I ended it in the autumn, after seven years, because it had quietly become a habit rather than a relationship and neither of us had been willing to say so. He did not want it to end. Within a month it was clear that a good number of people who had been my friends for a decade had arrived at a settled view of what had happened, and it was not mine.

Forty four, North York, eighteen years in and both directions. I am not going to relitigate any of it here and I do not think anybody behaved badly. What happened is what happens in a scene this size: he was upset, he talked to people, they were sympathetic, and by Christmas the shape of the story had set like concrete.

The result is that I go to fewer things, which I mind less than I expected to, and that I am wary of anybody who already knows the outline. Twice this spring somebody has opened a conversation with a knowing sort of sympathy and I found it almost unbearable.

So I am looking outside all of it. Somebody who was not there, does not know him, has no opinion about the ending and no interest in acquiring one. I want one person, both directions, over years, and a social life that belongs to the two of us rather than to a circle that has already made up its mind.