A place in a household, not a person to see on Thursdays

There are two of us and there has been a third before, and what we are describing is genuinely a place in a household rather than somebody to see occasionally. That distinction loses us most people at the first message and we would rather lose them there than in month six.

We are forty nine and fifty two, north London, together nineteen years, and I have led for fourteen of them. The previous arrangement ran five years, ended when he met somebody and moved to another city, and he still rings at Christmas.

What it looked like in practice: he kept his own flat, his own job and his own friends, he was here three evenings a week and most Sundays, he had duties that were his and nobody else's, and he was on the family calendar stuck to the fridge. Undramatic. That is the point of it. The best part was ordinary company with a shape around it.

We move slowly. Months of talking, several meetings in public with all three of us present, and nothing settled until everybody has said the awkward parts out loud at least once. Nobody is kept and no money is involved in any direction.

Not looking for a man who wants only one of us. Not looking for someone with nothing else in his life, because we have watched that go wrong for friends and we would rather have a person with a full week than a person waiting by a phone. Not looking to be anybody's rescue from anything.