Somebody asks me my rates about once a week, and the answer is that there are none

About once a week somebody asks me my rates. Not rudely, usually. They ask the way you would ask a plumber, and I have come to understand that a good number of men genuinely do not know that the thing I am describing and the thing they are picturing are two entirely different arrangements.

So, for the record and for anybody scrolling: nothing here is for sale. There is no fee, no tribute, no gift that buys a reply, and no version of this in which money moves in either direction. If money is part of what you want, that is a real thing in the world, run by professionals who state their terms honestly and deserve to be paid properly for their work. It is not me and it never will be.

Forty one, Manhattan, I work in insurance underwriting, fourteen years of leading. What I am looking for is a partner. The dynamic is how I love somebody, not a service I perform on request.

I will be honest about why this makes me short tempered. Being asked for a price is being told, politely, that what I am is a product. It also means half my conversations begin with me proving a negative, which is more tiring than it sounds to anybody who has never had to do it.

Not looking for a man who wants to be a client. Not looking to be tested on whether I will eventually name a number. Not looking for anybody who thinks refusing money is a negotiating position, because I have had that too and it is the fastest way to end a conversation with me.