The obstacle is not compatibility. It is a shared wall

The obstacle is not compatibility. It is that I live in a one bedroom flat with a neighbour whose sitting room shares a wall with my bedroom, and I have watched three promising things in this city die quietly of exactly that fact.

Forty eight, north London, I work in publishing, I have led in two relationships, and I cannot host anything involving noise, a man arriving at eleven at night, or anybody staying regularly.

So I am posting for somebody with his own place, or with the patience for a dynamic that lives mostly in ordinary life rather than behind a closed door. In practice that means rules, tasks, correspondence, and a good deal of time spent in public being unremarkable, with a smaller share of everything else than most men are expecting when they write.

That is a real limitation and I would rather state it plainly than have it discovered. I have spent four years being told it does not matter and then watching it matter enormously in month three.

What I am good at is the long, steady, structured part. I am consistent, I remember what I said last week, and I do not use silence as a tool. Not looking for a man who cannot host and cannot travel, because between the two of us we would have nowhere at all to be. Not looking for anything that requires a spare room. Not looking to move house for anybody this decade.