I remember when I was in my early 20's I fell in love with someone but I did not want to commit to them. I wanted to fuck around, and I admitted this to myself. So I did not want to be boyfriend and girlfriend. I'm really happy I admitted that to myself. So it's possible to be in love with someone but not want to be B & G.

"i'm in my 30s, and my friends are getting married, and I get down on myself sometimes for being single"

I dont get why women beat themselves up over this. I've never felt the need to be married, and don't compare myself to my married friends. It feels good man' not having that burden. Real good.

Plus nobody likes the stench of an unmarried woman desperate for the babies and husband. (Not saying LW is like that).

You're not the one. His next girlfriend will be the one. You had the bad luck of meeting him at the wrong time. Sucks, but its the way it is. People don't stick with the one they work through their issues with.

Ppen, the reason women beat themselves up over this is that there is a limited time frame in which they can do it, so if, unlike you, it IS something they want, it's a bit like wanting to be a professor and still only having a post-doc position when you're 40.

Riffing a little bit on what Miss Alkon said, what's so great about this guy? All the LW said was that they have a great time together. But she never did say she was head-over-heels, and from what she says, the fellow obviously isn't. He says only that they have "long term potential," which makes it sound more like he's considering buying a car, rather than making a lifetime decision.

Miss Alkon suggests establishing a deadline in your head of two or three months. I agree, although I think the answer's pretty obvious already.

Oh, by the way, LW's only 34; she's still got a little time yet, I think, if she doesn't waste it on non-starters.

Just one point Old RPM Daddy - at 34, she has very little time if she want's to be a wife and mom.

It was really odd - when I was a young horn-dog, the idea of getting a woman pregnant was a horror, a teen or early-20's pregnancy would have ruined my life. I'd been taught that girls could get pregnant if I put my shoes under their bed. So I worked very hard for almost a quarter-century to NOT get women pregnant.

Then we hit our 40's, and my together, independent female friends of the new millennium decided they were ready to have babies. They had careers that they could now park while the children were young, they had hobbies they could engage in when they weren't directly involved in child-rearing . . .

Guess what: it's a whole LOT harder to get pregnant when you're 40 than when you're 19. Over and over again I watched friends get increasing desperate and spend astonishing amounts of money trying to do what I'd spent almost two and a half decades trying to avoid.

Most were partially successful. I've got a small sample, but two of them went from "I want a houseful of kids" to "2." One more went from "2 or 3" to "one and done." And two just struck out completely. One was just too old, and the other, tragically, discovered that she was among the 4% of women whose eggs are no longer viable at the ripe old age of 36.

So turns out that, at least by MY observation, that if a woman wants to be a wife and mother, she needs to use her early 20's to attract a mate and reproduce. And at 34, the clock is seriously running down for many, if not most women.

Lamont

The biological clock is a tricky thing. I know a couple who decided to get married "for their 10th anniversary." They decided when she was about 34 that they should probably start having kids before it was too late (they are BOTH geneticists). They had one the old fashioned way, then another by IVF (they'd been told that it wasn't possible to do w/o). They wanted 3, so they did IVF again and got twins. At this point, they had a 4ish year old, a toddler, and twin infants. The twins were born in January. In March they had a "Hey! They said that couldn't happen!" and their 5th was born in Dec (yes, 3 babies, pregnancies, 1 calendar year).

The eldest was born when she was 35, so the last was born when she was 40.

Obviously, this isn't a common case, but it does happen.

Then there are people who "try" starting in their early 20s and have trouble - I know a few of those too.

Lamont, point taken, although Shannon M. Howell points out that the biological clock isn't always easy to figure out. I do agree she hasn't got forever, though.

As an outlier, I went to high school with a lady who had her first (and I presume only) child when she was 44! We're forever seeing her son's picture on Facebook. Cute little guy.

But for a woman to be unmarried past 30 and still want children makes for some tricky calculus. This can't be easy, and I wish the LW well.

She should date older guys who are also looking to settle. Guys tend to start panicking later, but many of them do panic contrary to popular belief.

34 could be pushing it. I have friends and cousins that need help at that age or even earlier.

She should not waste too much time.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Was I born without the biological urge to have children, which makes me view them only as something that ruins your life and keeps you broke all the time?

Or did I figure out first that they ruin your life and keep you broke all the time first, which caused me to decide as a result that I didn't want them?

Either way, I'm not only glad I don't have them, I'm glad I never wanted them. When I read about the kind of struggles people put themselves through because they care about these timelines, I'm happy to be in Ppen's camp.

The relationship is only 3 months old, so while she might want to move it along, on relationship scales that's really not long enough for him to make big commitment decisions already, he might well still come round. But it's a tricky thing, as any 'pressure' could well have the opposite effect of chasing him away, especially given his skittishness. It needs to feel like his decision. And if he's off, you're back to square one.

Thanks for the explanation NicoleK. To be honest I just didnt get it.

So many of my friends are getting into that mode because we are close to hitting 30, *gasp*. And I know some girls that don't even care who they get pregnant by.

It's crazy, and the stinkyness of being so desperate just drives the men off.

It's harder to get pregnant at 35 than it is at 25, but, despite all the hand-wringing, statistically, it's not extremely difficult. Most women even in their mid 30s should get pregnant within a year of trying.

And statistics don't speak for individuals. A friend of mine got pregnant easily at 40. My cousin started trying at 27, and it took her 20 years and much medical intervention before she finally had twins, one of whom has Downs Syndrome, because that's the risk you take having a baby at 47.

I think this woman needs to evaluate her time scale. Even if he does use the G-word soon, how long is it going to take him to inch his way toward engagement, marriage and kids? It could take years. He's under no pressure biologically.

I can speak to this with some experience. When I met my husband he was engaged to another woman. I found him attractive, but didn't think anything more about it, since I've never gone after men who are attached. We were in an organization together, so I saw him pretty regularly.

After 18 months or so, things started to crumble with his fiancee. When he told me she'd postponed the wedding, I let him know I'd always found him attractive. He told her that if they were postponing the wedding, he wanted to be free to see other people. We were in bed together within a week. He was 24, I was 31, so the age difference was similar.

I suspected on the first date that he was the man for me. But I also knew he'd been in a committed relationship since he was 21, that he'd gotten pretty badly burned, and that he simply was not going to be ready for another commitment any time soon. I actually told him I was in no hurry, since I planned to know for at least fifty years. We dated for a good 18 months with a theoretical "we can both see other people" pact -- which, I'm convinced, he never took advantage of.I knew he loved me, that it was more about timing than anything else.

After 18 months, though, I told him it was time to get both feet in or both feet out of the relationship, that I wanted him and loved him beyond all telling, but I needed more. I made it clear that it was time to commit or move on. He committed. We've been together 23 years, married for 18, and we're still crazy about each other.

Here's the downside: We married too late for kids. We tried, but since we didn't marry till I was 36, it was just too late. It bothered us both for a while, but we're both comfortable with it now; we like our peaceful life. No doubt if we'd had kids, we'd be glad we'd done that. It's hard to really imagine another life, you know?

I can tell you this: I would not trade this marriage for anything, including children. I would far, far rather be married to the right man and childless than have married earlier and had kids with the wrong guy.

Life is a series of choices, and all choices have consequences, many of them unforeseen. To me, the real question is "Can I imagine not wanting to stay with this man?" Once my DH and I had been together for several months, I simply could not see a future without him.

1. Kids are not all they're made out to be, but try to tell that to a late 20/early 30 something woman and her hormones will tell you differently. I wish I could get them to understand that raising kids is hard, sometimes impossibly frustrating, that those kids may hate you for a few (or more) years if you're doing your job right, and they may turn out to be nasty people, without sounding like a cynical hag.

2. This chick wants some sort of committment after three months. Hell, they don't even know one another!

Can you say "Baby Rabies"?

Contrary to what many women think, getting knocked up at forty isn't difficult at all-- I've been the culprit with three of them.

You're not the one. His next girlfriend will be the one. You had the bad luck of meeting him at the wrong time. Sucks, but its the way it is. People don't stick with the one they work through their issues with.

You may be right, Nicole...assuming, that is, that he really was hurt by a former "the one" girlfriend. That might just be an excuse he's using, with his real reason for hesitation being that he's just not that into her.

And, if he's not that into her, a big reason may be the seven year age difference. Yes, some guys end up marrying older women, but the odds are probably against it.

By the way, Amy's title reminds me...

If anyone loves Italy as much as I do, you'd probably enjoy this book, which I discovered at a used bookstore last year. Australian writer Peter Moore bought a classic '61 Vespa from guy in Italy, named it Sophia, and ended up riding it from northern Italy through Tuscany to Rome. Very entertaining writing, and it's also interesting to learn about the history of Vespas.

He had a subsequent book, Vroom by the Sea, in which he used another Vespa (his beloved Sophia was being repaired) -- a more powerful one, which he named Marcello -- and drove it through Sardinia, Sicily and southern Italy. Not as good as the first effort, but still a fun read.

Women and men tend to gauge the age of relationships differently.

I had a GF in high school go nuts on me for forgetting our one month aniversery two week after our first date. Apparently she started counting from the day we started flirting a week before I asked her out offically

But 3 months = 12 weeks, @ 1-2 dates per week = 12-24 dates. Assuming the average of no sex until date 3 and once every other date, brings us to them having had sex between 4 and 10 times.

Gee, I wonder why he hasnt proposed yet.

I agree with those above wondering if her yearning has more to do with her womb and the lack of ring on her finger than her feelings for this guy

But it's a tricky thing, as any 'pressure' could well have the opposite effect of chasing him away, especially given his skittishness.

***

That's a GOOD thing. If you want commitment you need to weed out the guys who don't want it.

The guys who DO want it will want to be dating exclusively after a few weeks, let alone a few months.

Too many girls "play it cool" by pretending they don't want/care about commitment. All that does is keep the guys who just want to fuck you around, and make the serious guys think you aren't.

You can't trick an uninterested guy into being interested.

Sounds like the boy's workin' some decent Game on her, giving her the elusive, aloof treatment with just enough random "Luv U!" thrown in to keep her chasing him forever. Her competitive biological-clock instincts are overwhelming her, and her "But he said he LOVES me?!!?" rationalizations will have her running back and forth like a kitty-cat chasing a laser pointer. Good for him!

"But it's a tricky thing, as any 'pressure' could well have the opposite effect of chasing him away, especially given his skittishness. "

My guess is that pressure has already been applied, and that that is why the 'I love you came out'. It is probably what he thought she was pressuring him for, or felt it would get the pressure off.

My cousin could have written this 2 years ago except her and her "kinda boyfriend" were about 10 years younger. He had been with a girl for 6 years before her (his first everything) and she cheated and dumped him, blah, blah, blah. She complained to me but also said she was SO happy, he was really good to her, etc. I told her that, if she was really happy, maybe she should wait it out. It took 8-9 months to get the official title, over a year to say "I love you", another year and a baby later to get a ring but now they are happily married and expecting baby #2. It just depends on the person who has to wait.

I had another friend who waited 11 years and 2 kids for a ring. I don't think I would have but she knew that he was the man she wanted and didn't give up on him.

I know several women who didn't have kids until 40, and conceived pretty easily without any medical intervention. Two of them were 44 and 45, respectively.

I know another woman who went into periomenopause at 26, and was told she couldn't have kids. She stopped using birth control. Ironically, she conceived quite unexpectedly two years later (giving birth to a healthy baby).

I know two other women who discovered they had fertility problems before they were 30. One finally conceived, after 7 years of unsuccessful and incredibly expensive fertility treatments. The other resorted to a donor egg at age 32.

Just saying -- we're not all alike, our reproductive systems aren't aging at exactly the same rate, and life isn't always fair or predictable. Yes, it'd probably unwise to blithely put off having a baby until 45, IF you've got all the other pieces in place before that -- i.e., a loving partner, a strong desire on both his part and yours to have a baby, and the ability to support the baby.

But it's equally unwise to grab any dude with a pulse and a penis just to have a baby because you're afraid time will run out. A baby isn't something to have on a panicky whim, because you're afraid if you don't do it now, maybe you never will. A baby is a life-changing commitment, and you can't give it back if it doesn't work out.
Worse comes to worst, you can always adopt, or be a foster mom, or be a loving aunt to your siblings' or friends' kids. A lot of kids out there need love.

I dont think IVF should be legal, except in rare cases where an otherwise healthy woman suffered a physical trauma to her uterus.

Nature doesnt give a shit about your feelings, and if you can get pregnant naturally there is probably a good reason.

I'm wonder what effect such children of infertile couples will have on the genome

if you can get pregnant naturally there is probably a good reason.

Recent experiences have given me a greater awareness for just how many things can go wrong at every stage of having a child -- minor issues that can cause major problems.

I got pregnant really easily. Had a ridiculously easy pregnancy. Then I spent 50 hours in labor, with an eventual c-section, because she turned at the last moment and tried to be born sideways. In another century, it's possible both of us would have died in the attempt. Maybe that would have been better for the genome, but it's hard to see how. She seems perfectly healthy.

A friend of mine is pregnant with her third child. Kid No. 1 was conceived easily. Kid No. 2 was conceived via IVF. Kid No. 3 was an accident. She wanted a third but didn't think she could have more. She'll never know why it was so hard to get pregnant with No. 2. A lot of the time the problem isn't genetic.

"I'm wonder what effect such children of infertile couples will have on the genome"

A few points:

- It's unlikely that there is a significant correlation (for the most part) between modern rationally desirable traits, and infertility

- Most so-called "fertile" people who have babies wouldn't have been able to make babies anyway if it were left up to nature, as there are a huge number of modern interventions that assist along the way - so don't feel too smug about being "fertile" unless you REALLY feel COMPLETELY confident to leave EVERY aspect of your own (or own wife's) pregnancy up to nature. Not even ultrasounds to pre-screen for problems. No antibiotics for simple infections, sorry! No hospitals, no clinics, no electricity, nothing. Let's see how good your "genes" really are.

- It's extremely unlikely that there will be any significant long-term detrimental effects on our genome whatsoever because within 100 years we will have the complete ability to easily and affordibly re-engineer the DNA of our offspring in any way we like - that means correcting any defects.

"Then I spent 50 hours in labor, with an eventual c-section, because she turned at the last moment and tried to be born sideways"

Also why people who don't want to give birth in a modern hospital are idiots.