Three women have told me I write too much. This is the fourth draft

I have been told, by three different women and in very nearly the same words, that I write too much. This post is a fourth draft and it is half the length of the first one, and I am aware that mentioning that is itself the problem.

Thirty six, out in the commuter belt, I work in insurance, I live alone, and I run in the mornings because it is the one thing that stops my head doing this all day.

What I am trying to say without eight hundred words wrapped around it: I want to be led by a woman, in something ongoing, and my particular difficulty is that I explain myself compulsively when I am nervous. It reads as need. It frightens people off long before we get anywhere near the interesting part.

What actually helped, in the one dynamic I have had, was being given a limit. She told me to say things in three sentences and to send them once, and it was the kindest thing anybody has done for me. That ran two years and ended when she went back to her husband, which I knew about throughout, and which is a different story entirely.

So if you are somebody who does not mind being direct about that sort of thing, we would probably get on. I take correction well. I do not sulk. I know what I am like and I am working on it rather than asking anybody else to. Not looking for reassurance on demand. Not looking to be told I am too much, which I have heard, and which I already believe.