Some opportunities don't come twice

This is the closing entry. It covers August 10 through August 18. No date took place and nothing was spent.

The arrangement began on April 20 and ended on August 12. It ran 120 days to the filing of this report.

Summary of charges

• Dates held: 0
• Out-of-pocket costs: $0.00
• Duration: 0 minutes
• Follow-up: none

Final cumulative: $2,570.94 across 11 dates and 120 days.

The subscription

On August 3 I subscribed to Paired, a couples app, so that we could get to know each other better. I invited her and she joined. The cost was $39.99 for 1 year.

The app asks both people questions and shows each of them the other’s answer.

I had been estimating questions from memory since April 20. The figure appears on all 11 date forms in this file and it came out even on every one of them, 10 and 10 or 5 and 5, arrived at afterward by listing topics until the lists ran out together. On August 3, on day 105, I bought software that asks the questions and records the answers as they happen, and I paid a year in advance for it.

We used it every day for 7 days. That is the only unbroken 7-day run of reciprocal disclosure in this arc, both parties answering, both parties reading. It is also the last thing in this file that either of us did daily.

The subscription was purchased 9 days before the arrangement ended. 356 days of it remain and they are not transferable. At $39.99 for 365 days, $39.00 of it outlives the thing it was bought for, and it expires on Tuesday, August 3, 2027.

The twelfth date

On August 10 I proposed one.

“Saturday, 19:00 at my place. Just bring your beautiful self, I’ll take of the rest.”

“What’s the rest?”

“Food, drink, music, movie, games, company, kisses.”

“Are all this activities 5 minutes each sir?”

“If you’re concerned with time… we can skip the games and put all our time into the kissing. That’s definitely gonna be more than 5 min.”

I want that exchange preserved because of what it is. She was teasing and I was playing along, and on the evidence of this file that is the loosest either of us has been in writing in 4 months. The man who was told on May 30 that he is not playful had, by August, learned to be. It reads well. It is the last thing in this arc that does.

“How much time do you presume this activities would take? a movie alone takes 90 mins at the least. Keeping in mind I have to go back home early”

“I was not planning on sending you home early. I’d like to spend the night with you, and wake up next you. So I can truthfully answer those Paired questions. 😉”

“I don’t think I’m ready for a sleepover yet.

I’ve worked quite a lot since Saturday and this will include Friday night..meaning I’ve got to catch up with the kids too and my chores .😏”

That is the fourteenth disclaimer and the last one. It is unambiguous, it was volunteered, and it names a thing she was not going to do.

The overnight was her idea. She raised it in my driveway on July 25, at the end of the only evening this file records inside a house. I asked for it on August 1 and was told she would consider it. I asked for it again on August 10 and was told she was not ready.

There is an earlier date on it than July 25. On July 22, at a speakeasy, she asked me to fly to Washington with her on August 15, and a concert in another state on a Saturday carries a room in it. She did not say so and she did not have to. The invitation was hers, it was the only one she made in 120 days, and the thing it contained arrived 19 days before she told me she was not ready for it.

Both statements are hers and both are accurate to the day they were made. I am not reconciling them. I am recording that the arrangement had an overnight in it from July 22 and that it was never once scheduled, by either party, in the 21 days that followed.

I replied:

“Understood, we’ll save the extended date for when you’re not coming off a brutal shift week.

I’ll drop a few of the planned activities so you can get home when you need to.”

That was the evening of August 11. I accommodated the constraint and reduced the scope of the plan.

August 12

The following afternoon I wrote:

“I’m picking up what you’ve been putting down: ‘some opportunities don’t come twice’. You’ve been telling me… I just wasn’t hearing it. We are fundamentally misaligned on effort, intimacy, and where this is going.

I have no more energy for effort. I have nothing more to give you. It’s time we stop seeing each other. Take care.”

Less than 24 hours separates the message in which I dropped activities so she could get home and the message in which I ended it. Both are mine. The file records no event between them.

She replied:

“‘Some opportunities don’t come twice’ is a common phrase and it’s used as a joke. You definitely misunderstood this statement.

I have been appreciating getting to learn what you like especially through the paired app and was looking forward to better days.

I wish you well as you move forward.”

The misreading

I built a conclusion on a sentence and the sentence did not say what I recorded it as saying.

This file holds 3 prior occasions on which I produced an answer and she supplied the accurate version of it. On April 25 I fumbled what I am looking for in a relationship and she said it back to me in a clearer form, and I agreed with her wording. In June I summarised a phone call as me maintaining the structure and her maintaining the warmth, and she wrote that was the conclusion. On July 1 I guessed her foundation shade and she showed me the code.

This is the fourth and it is the one the arrangement ended on. The difference is that the first 3 corrections arrived before I acted and this one arrived after.

Her message names the app. She wrote that she had been appreciating getting to learn what I like through it, and that she was looking forward to better days.

The app was the one channel in 120 days in which she answered daily without being prompted, and it ran for 7 of the 9 days it existed before I closed the account. I had been estimating reciprocity from memory for 4 months and I ended the arrangement 2 days after the last session of the instrument I had bought to record it properly. Neither of those facts was in front of me at 2 o’clock that afternoon, because I did not go and look.

August 18

Six days later I wrote:

“M. I owe you an apology for how I ended things. After almost 4 months, ending it with a cold, reactive text wasn’t right, and you didn’t deserve that tone. I let my frustration over unspoken things guide my words instead of having an honest conversation, and working on communication like I said I would. I appreciate getting to know you and the time we shared.

I just wanted to own my fuckup and wish you and the kids the absolute best. No need to reply.”

She reacted to it with a heart and sent no words. There has been no contact since.

That is the last entry in the record: a reply that is technically a reply. It is 1 character, it is not quotable, and it closes a file that quotes 14 of her statements in full.

That is the third correction entered after the fact in this file, and the only one delivered to the other party.

A note on the figures

Every question count on every form in this file is an estimate.

Neither of us ever kept a tally, on any date, at any table. I arrived at each figure afterward, by listing the topics I remembered answering against the topics I remembered her answering and stopping when the lists ran out. The first entry says so and every entry since has repeated it, and I am saying it once more here because of what got built on top of it.

The reciprocity column balanced on all 11 dates. No other column on these forms managed it more than 4 times, and all of them together managed 8. It is the one I cited on form after form as the thing that was working, the single line of evidence that whatever else was one-sided, the conversation was not.

The dollars came off card statements. The minutes came off a clock. The disclaimers are quoted. The one number that consistently reported this arrangement as equal is the only figure in 120 days that was never measured, and I produced it 11 times, from memory, after the fact, and it came out even 11 times.

Final accounting

• Days: 120, April 20 to August 18
• Dates held: 11
• Time in company: 1,800 minutes, or 30 hours
• Time I spent driving: 1,085 minutes
• Time M. spent driving: 340 minutes
• Manufacture: 420 minutes
• Out of pocket, me: $2,570.94
• Out of pocket, M.: $0.00
• Cost per day: $21.42
• Cost per hour in company: $85.70
• Spend that bought no date at all: $1,228.94, being 47.8 percent
• Subscription remaining, non-transferable: 356 days, $39.00, expiring August 3, 2027
• Questions asked: even on all 11 dates, every figure an estimate made after the fact
• Phone checks: 3, in 1,800 minutes
• Agreements reached in person: 0 of 11
• Physical initiations recorded: 19. Mine: 18. Hers: 1, the kiss on June 9.
• Disclaimers issued: 14, every one of them volunteered
• Rationalizations recorded: 3, all mine
• Corrections entered after the fact: 3, all mine
• Requests made by M.: 3. Granted: 2, both claims against instruments I wrote. Declined: 1, the only one that was not.
• Policies issued: 16. Redeemed: 2. Outstanding: 14.
• Recoverable: $0.00

Status

The account is closed.

There are 356 days left on a subscription to an app that asks 2 people questions, and there are 14 handwritten policies in a glass box in another house, each one a promise that on some future failure of mine she would be owed something. They were written for birthdays and anniversaries and important dinners that were not scheduled at the time and are not going to be now. They do not expire, they simply have nobody left to pay out to, which is a different thing and is the reason this site exists.

The thirteen disclaimers are all on the earlier forms and all of them were accurate. She said on April 25 that if I asked for more communication she would oblige, and when I finally asked, 53 days later, she did. She said on May 30 that she reflects feelings that have been shown first and does not go first herself, and she never did. She said on July 22 that she leaves space for disappointments. Every figure in this ledger was available to me in her own words before I spent it.

The last line on this form is the same one that closes every entry on this site. It has been printed 15 times in 4 months and this is the first time I have had to read it.

Recoverable: $0.00.