I am an hour down the motorway and I will do that drive happily
Posted as an_hour_each_way
- Looking for
- one evening a week with somebody in or near the city
- Experience
- Twelve years, one dynamic of eight, ended when he became ill.
- Around
- out towards Worcestershire, Birmingham
I live in a village where I am probably the only person within four miles who has ever given any of this a thought, and I stopped minding about that some years ago. Birmingham is an hour away and I have driven it weekly for most of a decade without once resenting the journey.
Forty four, twelve years in, eight of them with one man who became ill and could not continue, which was nobody's fault and still took me two years to get past.
I lead with the distance because it is what people raise, and I would rather head it off. I am not going to move. I am not going to be available on a whim. I am never going to be the one who is twenty minutes away when something comes up. What I can be is entirely reliable one evening a week, and occasionally a whole weekend, arranged in advance.
The arrangement I want runs through the week even when we are nowhere near each other. Honestly, that part matters to me more than the evening does. Tasks, expectations, being answerable to somebody on a Wednesday when the next Tuesday is still six days off.
Not looking for anybody who wants spontaneity, which the motorway removed from my life permanently. Not looking for someone who tells me the distance is fine and discovers in November that it is not. And not looking to be the option for the weeks when somebody's first choice is busy.