We brought a twelve year arrangement to a place where we know nobody

We moved here two years ago for my wife's work, bringing a marriage, a dog and a twelve year arrangement that neither of us has ever had to explain to anybody, because everyone who needed to know already did. Where we came from we had four couples we could be entirely ourselves around. Here we have a very good dentist and nobody at all.

Forty five and forty seven, north Jersey, married nineteen years, she has led for twelve of them, one child at college who knows nothing about any of this and never will.

What we did not expect is how much the arrangement leaned on those four couples. Not for advice. For the ordinary business of sitting in a room once a month where nothing has to be edited, which turns out to be the thing that kept ours a private matter rather than a secret. Two years without it and we can both feel the difference in the house.

So we are looking for two or three couples to know properly over a long time. Dinners, an afternoon, the occasional bad film. Slow is completely fine, and we would rather have two real friendships in three years than a circle by Christmas.

Not looking for a third and not looking to play with anybody, now or later. Not looking for anything that has to be attended. Not looking for a couple who want to talk about this exclusively, because our old friends raised it perhaps twice a year and were friends about everything else.