There is no sexual part to this and I am not being coy

There is no sexual element to what I am asking for, and every time I say so people assume I am being coy or protecting myself. I am not. It is the plain description. I want to be of use to a woman, under her direction, and I want none of it to end up in a bedroom.

Fifty four, Brooklyn, I proofread for a living and I am the sort of person who alphabetises other people's spice racks without being asked. Widowed at forty seven, and I want to be clear this has nothing to do with that. It predates it by about thirty years.

What I mean by useful: errands, cleaning, cooking, and the endless small maintenance a life generates. What I want from her is direction and honesty. Being told the thing was done wrong, in the moment, is what makes it mean anything, and it is the part most people are far too polite for.

I have had two arrangements like this. The first ran eight years and ended when she moved west to be near her son. The second ran two and ended because she wanted it to become something else and I could not, which I would rather say here than discover again the hard way.

No money, no living arrangement, no keys. Not looking for a woman who finds this sad, which I understand and can do nothing about. Not looking to be an experiment in whether a man will stay without sex. Not looking to be told what I really want, which happens to me about once a month.