An hour and ten minutes out, and I am not going to pretend that is nothing

I live an hour and ten minutes out and I am not going to pretend that is nothing. It is the single fact most likely to end this before it begins, and I would rather put it in the first line than have you quietly resenting the trains by week five.

Forty nine, in a commuter town nobody has heard of, divorced four years, children with me every other weekend, and a job in logistics that finishes at five and genuinely finishes.

What that leaves me is weekday evenings, which sounds worse than it is. I can be in town by seven if I go straight from work, I can stay until the last train, and on alternate weekends I have two whole days.

What I want is structure that survives distance. Tasks, standards, a check in, things I do at home on the nights I am not with you. My marriage had this in it for six years, openly, and the part that worked best was exactly that: being accountable at a distance rather than only when somebody was watching. It ended for reasons that had nothing to do with it, which I know is what everyone says.

Not looking for someone who wants spontaneity, because I cannot do spontaneous from here. Not looking to be told the distance is fine and then to hear about it in month four. And not looking for anything that would require me to move, because the children are the entire reason I live out here.