Most men offering to serve me would add three hours to my week

Here is the thing almost nobody writing to me has understood. A man who wants to be useful but needs telling what to do, checking on, and reassuring afterwards has not taken anything off my plate. He has added a small member of staff to it. Half the offers I get would cost me three hours a week that I do not have, and every one of those men is entirely sincere.

Thirty six, the Bronx, I am a hospital pharmacist on a rotating schedule, ten years of leading, two relationships of four and three years.

What actually helps is a man who takes a whole area and owns it, with the thinking attached, so that it disappears from my head completely and I discover it has been handled because it has been handled. That takes about a year to build properly and it is the most valuable thing anybody has ever done for me.

I am not saying I do not want to direct. I do, and the directing is the shape of the entire relationship. I am saying that direction and supervision are different things, and I want the first and cannot afford the second.

Not looking for a man who needs praise as a condition of continuing, though he will certainly get it. Not looking for somebody whose idea of service is asking every evening what he can do for me. Not looking to build a system for a man who will need it rebuilt from scratch each time his own life gets busy.