I wrote the first half. My wife wrote the second, and she is not part of it

My wife wrote the second half of this and I wrote the first, and the reason we are doing it that way is that she does not want what I want and has been extremely decent about it for three years.

I am fifty, she is forty eight, east London, married nineteen years. What I want is a woman who leads, in something ongoing and entirely separate, and I would not be here at all without my wife's agreement, which took two years of conversation and one very patient counsellor to reach.

This is her. I am not submissive and I am not dominant, and I find the subject roughly as interesting as cricket. What I am is married to him and unwilling to watch him be quietly unhappy for another twenty years over something that costs me nothing whatsoever. I am not looking for anything myself. I am writing this half so that nobody has to take his word for any of it.

Between us: he has three evenings a week and alternate Saturdays. He is not looking to leave, and anybody hoping to be the reason he does should stop reading here. I have met one of the women he has spoken to and would be glad to do that again, or glad not to, whichever suits everyone.

Not looking for anyone who wants secrecy from me, since secrecy is the single thing we have agreed is not available. Not looking for a woman who would find the arrangement objectionable in principle, which is fair enough and much better said early. Not looking for anything that becomes a second household, because we already have one that works.