I want the second year and nobody seems to write about that one

Everything written about this is about beginnings. How you meet, how you negotiate, how a first evening goes, what to watch for in a new person. There is an enormous quantity of it, most of it is good, and none of it is about the thing I want, which is what happens in the second year and the fifth.

Thirty seven, the east end, thirteen years in and both ends of it. I have started four partnerships and I am extremely good at starting them. I have never once got past about fourteen months, and the pattern is embarrassingly consistent: it is fascinating while there is something left to establish, and then we arrive at the ordinary part and I watch the whole thing thin out.

I have concluded that I am the problem, or at least that I have been selecting for the wrong quality. I have chosen people who were also good at beginnings, which is easy to spot and pleasant to be near, and neither of us has ever known what to do with a Tuesday in year two.

So this time I would like to hear from somebody who is bored of the opening and specifically wants what comes after it. Somebody who has been in a partnership for years and can describe what it is actually like. I realise that asking a stranger to skip to the good part is not how any of this works, and I want to name it at the top anyway.