I want the formal version of this, in a region that finds formality funny
Posted as the_formal_version
- Looking for
- somebody who wants protocol and will not laugh three weeks in
- Experience
- Thirteen years, two long dynamics, both of them highly structured.
- Around
- Solihull, Birmingham
What I want is protocol. Forms of address, standing rules about how we speak to one another, small ceremonies at the beginning and the end of the time we spend together. I am aware of how that sounds anywhere, and especially aware of how it sounds round here, where taking yourself seriously is treated as a character flaw.
Forty three, Solihull, thirteen years in, and both of my long dynamics ran on exactly this basis.
The usual objection is that it is play acting. My experience has been the opposite. Protocol is the most reliable method I know for marking the difference between the part of life where somebody is in charge and the part where two adults are watching television, and without it the whole thing bleeds outwards and becomes either constant or nothing at all.
The person this suits finds precision restful and wants to be able to feel the arrangement even when nothing at all is happening. It does not suit somebody who wants intensity in bursts and quiet in between. The failure I have met twice is a person who finds it charming for a month and self conscious by the third, which is nobody's fault and which I would rather be embarrassing about in a public post than discover again in September.