What I paid six women to tell me

I have a credit card statement in my desk drawer. It covers fourteen months, $2,400, and six different women who each gave me a different month for when Danny would come back.

Not one of them asked me what I wanted him to come back to. Neither did I.

Venus has been retrograde since October 3 and stays that way until November 13. To the date merchants, that makes it reunion season.

Maybe a message arrives this month and maybe it doesn't. A season is weather, not a promise.

Here's the part almost nobody talks about. If he comes back, he will probably say the words you've been waiting for: "I miss you." "I want to try again."

And you hear a whole house. Keys, Sunday mornings, his name next to yours on a lease.

He might mean a Tuesday.

I call it The Same Word Problem. Two people say "us" and picture two different buildings. One of you is drawing a home, and the other is drawing a soft place to land when the loneliness gets loud.

He texts at 11pm and says he wants to hear your voice. You want to know whether he's coming to the wedding in June. Same feeling, two different relationships.

Of the Six Evidences of real readiness, shared intention is the easiest one to skip, because you can't feel it. Accountability shows up in an apology, and consistency shows up over weeks.

Shared intention only shows up when both people say out loud what they are building, and then build that.

Guess who spent fourteen months asking six women when Danny would come back, and never once wrote down what I wanted if he did? Me.

Savannah offered me a job that spring, and I turned down a real city for an imaginary kitchen.

There's a reason the date merchants sell you "when" and never "what." A date keeps you booking the next reading. A clear answer to "what do we both want" might end the subscription.

My mother waited nine years on a man and called it faith. I loved her for that faith, and I also watched what nine years of guessing someone else's intentions costs a person.

"But he said he wants to try again."

Try what, exactly? A relationship has a shape: how often you talk, whether you meet his people, what happens on a bad Wednesday, where it's going a year from now.

"Try again" is a feeling. It isn't a plan yet.

Am I telling you he doesn't mean it? I read cards for a living, which makes me many things, but not a lie detector.

He may mean every word. The question is which relationship those words describe, and whether it's the same one yours do.

Shared intention isn't a speech. It's what he does with the next ninety days.

Does he make plans that include your actual life: your friends, your work, your weekends? Does the "us" he talks about show up on a calendar, or only at 11pm?

Slow is the good sign here. A man who means a life with you will want to talk about Sundays, money, and where you'll both be next October. A man who means a soft place to land will want to skip straight to the part where it feels good again.

What is different now, beyond the fact that he came back?

Whether he comes back or not, you get to know what you want first, and to hold it steady while everyone else is selling dates. If what he wants never matches it, letting go is a full answer too, not a consolation prize.

P.S. I keep that statement for a reason. It's the cheapest lesson I ever bought: $2,400 to learn that "when" was never the question. "What" was.