Thirty years of this with one person, and now I must describe it
Posted as thirty_years_one_person
- Looking for
- patience with somebody who has only ever done this once
- Experience
- Thirty years, all of it inside one marriage that ended last year.
- Around
- Solihull, Birmingham
We never used a single one of the words. We had a way of being with each other that started in our twenties and grew over thirty years, and it went in both directions depending on the decade, and it was only after she left that I discovered other people do versions of the same thing and have a whole vocabulary for it.
Fifty five, Solihull, and completely at sea.
So my experience is either enormous or nil depending on how you count. I know what thirty years of trust looks like from the inside. I have no idea how anybody begins, what you are supposed to say, how much is agreed in advance, or what the etiquette is for any of it. I have read a fair amount in the last eight months and it has mostly made me feel like an anthropologist reading about my own house.
What I would like is somebody who will let me be a beginner about the process while not treating me as a beginner about the substance. Both directions still interest me and I am not going to pretend I know which I will want with a new person, because with her it changed several times across three decades.
Not looking to replace her and not intending to talk about her much. Not looking for anything quick. And I would rather write for a while first, because I am considerably better on paper than I am sitting in front of somebody trying to summarise thirty years.