Both of us at zero, learning side by side, and here is why

Both of us at nothing, at the same time, is the specific thing I am after, and I am aware it is the less obvious option. There is a perfectly ordinary route where a beginner is brought along by somebody with years behind them. I have thought about it a great deal and I still want the other one, and I would rather explain why than let it look like an accident.

Twenty eight, the east end, fourteen months in and none of it under instruction. The reason is that I have watched three friends learn this from a partner who already knew everything, and in all three cases the relationship acquired a permanent tilt that never came out again. One of them is still, four years on, the junior person in her own house.

What I want instead is somebody who is also at the beginning, so that whatever either of us knows we found out together and neither is the authority. That means we will be slow, we will be careful with each other, and each of us will be responsible for our own limits rather than deferring to somebody else's confidence.

I should say plainly that I am not looking for a person who wants to be taught by me. That is the same tilt pointing the other way. I am after somebody who reads this and thinks that starting from nothing alongside another person sounds better than arriving somewhere already built.