The first one had no way of stopping, and I did not know to ask

My first arrangement had no way of stopping anything, and at the time I thought that was rather the point. There was no review, no scheduled conversation, nothing that could be raised without it counting as a complaint, and so it drifted somewhere neither of us would have chosen had we ever stopped to look. Nobody was cruel. The structure simply had no brakes in it and I did not know that was a thing to ask about.

Fifty two, Queens, a transit supervisor, divorced long before any of this, two dynamics behind me.

The second had brakes and was better in every respect. She kept a standing conversation once a month in which I was expected to say what was not working, and she took it seriously enough to change two things because of it. That one ended for ordinary reasons and I would do it again tomorrow.

So what I ask now, early and probably clumsily, is how you handle being wrong. Not whether you are ever wrong, which is a silly question to put to an adult. How it goes when you are, and whether there is a way for me to say so that is built in rather than improvised in the middle of a bad evening.

Not looking to be told a real dynamic needs no stop mechanism, which I have heard twice and which is precisely how the first one happened. Not looking to relitigate any of it with somebody new. Not looking for a woman who wants a man with no wariness in him, because at fifty two the wariness is most of what I have.