ongoingTwo years, unbroken
Four lines on a Sunday, for two years
Hannah and Maryam send each other four lines every Sunday and have not missed one, including the week Maryam was in hospital for something unrelated.
The community
Buddy pairings
A buddy is one person who already knows the background, on a standing evening, for a few lines. That is the entire design and we have resisted every suggestion to make it cleverer.
You write a short request note saying what you would like from it and what you are like to correspond with. A facilitator reads two notes and makes a guess. Nobody is matched by an algorithm, because we do not have one and do not want one.
Roughly a third of pairings do not take, and we would rather say that here than let anybody conclude they failed at it. When a pairing ends we ask for a one-line ending note, because a stated ending is kind and a fade is not. Paused is also a real status — it exists because a member pointed out that being asked to declare an ending she did not want was needlessly bleak.
Two boundaries. A buddy is not a clinician and will never be asked to behave like one. And facilitators do not normally take pairings with members of circles they hold; the single exception on the site is named and explained.
33 stories
Including the ones that stopped, which are the useful ones.
endedEnded well
The pairing that did not take, and what we learned
Six weeks, then a mutual and completely undramatic stop. We include it because roughly a third of pairings end and pretending otherwise would be dishonest.
ongoingShift work
Two night shifts, one time zone apart
Noah and Ash both work nights and both had given up on a Sunday-evening format that assumed a Monday-to-Friday life.
ongoingOpposites
The spreadsheet and the shrug
Dora charts everything. Ray charts nothing and is faintly appalled by charts. It has worked for nearly two years.
ongoingStopping
We both stopped, four months apart
Maeve stopped because of cost and Stefan stopped because he wanted to. Neither had anywhere to put that until they had each other.
ongoingInjection anxiety
On a call for the first injection, then every week after
Tilda had a pen in the fridge for eleven days. Juno sat on a video call and said almost nothing while she did it.
ongoingParents
Two kitchens, two sets of small children
Poppy and Toby write to each other after their children are asleep, mostly about cooking for people who are not you.
ongoingRural access
Four hours from a prescriber, both of us
Rowan is four hours from the nearest prescribing service. Col lives in a van. Between them they have solved most of the logistics problems this site knows about.
ongoingReading group
We read one paper a month and argue about it
Not a support pairing in the usual sense. Ruthie and Ashwin read one paper a month, badly, together, and are both better at it than they were.
ongoingA scare
The week it got frightening
Bo went to hospital with abdominal pain. Viv was the person who told her to go, and has been careful ever since about how she tells that story.
ongoingCare
When one of us noticed something in the other
Salma noticed the way Izzy had started writing about eating and said so once, kindly, and then stayed. Jonah was involved from the beginning, at Salma’s request.
ongoingAccess
Winning an appeal at the second attempt
Two US members who between them built the working method that became our appeals guide, after Zeb’s first attempt was refused in eleven days.
ongoingNon-scale change
The quiet one and the talker
Priya collects small things nobody claps for. Zoë talks a great deal. The arrangement is that Zoë reads Priya’s list back to her.
ongoingPlateau
Twelve weeks of nothing, both of us at once
Mark and Kez hit a long flat stretch at the same time and spent three months talking each other out of quitting on alternate weeks.
ongoingInternational
Across a language, in a third one
Soraya writes from Tehran and Marit from Groningen, in English, which is neither of their first languages, and both say that helps.
ongoingStrength
The gym and the chair
Lena lifts heavy things in Munich. Wilf, in his seventies, does eight minutes and a chair. Ren regards this as the ideal pairing.
ongoingA hard stretch
The fortnight one of us was in hospital
Carl was admitted for something entirely unrelated and Gus kept writing into the silence for eleven days without asking for anything back.
ongoingMaintenance
Two years in, and the news is that there is no news
A deliberately low-frequency pairing for two people whose weeks are, by design, uneventful.
ongoingSupply
The winter of the shortage
Two Irish members who got through a supply gap by pooling information about which pharmacies had what, and being extremely careful about how they shared it.
ongoingFamily
The two who already knew each other
Lil and Lu live in the same town and joined together, which is unusual here and comes with its own problems.
ongoingEating
Two vegetarians and a protein problem
Holly and Moss had both quietly given up on getting enough protein and had both assumed they were the only one.
ongoingFamily
When somebody at home is against it
Both had partners who were, in different registers, not in favour. This is the pairing that gave us the guide.
ongoingPCOS
Two decades of being told to try harder
Martha and Rin between them have about thirty years of being told the problem was effort, and a shared wariness about being pleased too soon.
ongoingRestart
Coming back after eight months away
Sadie came back after eight months off and was paired with somebody who had never left, at her own request.
ongoingClinical
The set of results that went the wrong way
Jonty had a set of results that moved in the wrong direction and spent three weeks not telling anybody. Including this page because the site would be dishonest without it.
ongoingCost
Two students and no money
Both are students, both are paying out of pocket, and neither will let the other be ashamed about the arithmetic.
ongoingOver 60
The pair who are both over seventy
Peggy and Ambrose write to each other by email in full sentences and are the only pairing here that has ever exchanged a letter on paper.
ongoingNeurodivergence
Routines, and what happens when the routine is the point
Both autistic, both wrecked by the change in interoception, and both relieved to find somebody who did not think that was a strange thing to be wrecked by.
ongoingSteady
The one who was doing fine and joined anyway
Neither of them has had a crisis. We include this because a site full of dramatic stories would misrepresent what most weeks are like.
pausedPaused
Paused, not ended
Pippa asked to pause for family reasons that have nothing to do with any of this, and Winnie held the pairing open for five months.
ongoingTravel
Two people who are never in the same country
Noor facilitates and does not usually buddy. She made an exception, and is careful about what that means.
ongoingGrief
Two people who were grieving as well
Nell and Tarn both started within a year of a bereavement, and both had found that nobody would let the two things sit in the same sentence.
ongoingThe original
The first pairing, from the original Thursday call
The oldest continuous pairing on the site, and the one the whole scheme was designed around after the fact.