Every other Sunday is genuinely all I have, and I know how that sounds
Posted as sunday_only
- Looking for
- somebody for whom a fortnightly rhythm would be enough
- Experience
- Twelve years, one marriage that included it, one that did not.
- Around
- the Clear Lake side, Houston
I have written and deleted this three times, because there is no version of it that does not start with an apology. So here is the honest arithmetic instead.
My mother has dementia and lives with me. My sister takes her every other week, and on those weeks Sunday is genuinely mine while the rest of the days go on work and getting the house back in order. What I can offer somebody is one Sunday in two, planned in advance, reliably. That is the whole of it. Forty six. Houston. Submissive, service leaning, far more interested in being useful than in anything dramatic. Cooking, errands, being handed a list. That is not a euphemism. I mean it fairly literally, and I am aware it is an unglamorous thing to advertise.
What I do not want is to be a secret forever. What I also do not want is anyone near my family, and I would rather say that plainly now than have it come up as a disappointment later. Those two things sit in tension and working out where the line goes would be part of the conversation. I have done this inside a marriage and outside one. The inside version was better, and I am not going to pretend I am not hoping for something that eventually looks like that again.
If a fortnight between meetings is a dealbreaker, and it reasonably might be, thank you for reading this far anyway.