I ended a dynamic well once, and it is the thing I am proudest of

The thing I am proudest of in fifteen years is an ending. Six years, unwound over four weeks, with a written plan for how the duties would stop, who would tell which friends, and what we would do about the fact that his entire week had my name on it. He is still somebody I would call. Almost everything I know about running one of these I learned by taking one apart carefully.

Forty seven, north Jersey, a school principal, fifteen years of leading, three relationships and only that one ended well.

So I now put the ending in at the beginning, which people find morbid for about a fortnight and then generally find reassuring. How we would stop. How much notice. What happens to the duties, because a man who has arranged four years of his week around somebody does not simply return to normal on the day she stops answering. My other two were ended by silence and both took a year to recover from, one of them mine.

What I run is domestic and ongoing. Decisions mine, standards mine, followed up properly, and a monthly conversation that is genuinely two sided rather than a report.

Not looking for a man who thinks planning an ending means expecting one. Not looking for anybody who wants to promise me forever in month two, which is charming and tells me nothing whatever. Not looking to do a disappearance again from either side, having been at both ends of one.