As for me: I have dated three people in four years.

One of them lasted eleven months and ended for entirely ordinary reasons and we still text at Christmas.

Hannah met her twice, briefly, after seven months, on Hannah’s schedule, which is now the rule in this house and which I state out loud on approximately the fourth date, in plain words, and which has ended two things early.

Good.

That is what the rule is for.

The one thing I do differently — the only real change — is that I no longer treat my daughter’s opinion of somebody as data to be managed.