14 April - A child in time

A. sends me a sad text to remind me it was her father’s death anniversary and to say that her boyfriend R. had turned up, with excellent timing, not, to tell her it’s over. He’s much younger than her and had lasted a good 5 months but eventually used the easy excuse that one day he may want children and she can’t have them –at 49 people finally stop saying things like ‘But there’s so much that can be done these days about fertility blah blah’. And so he told her, they better stop seeing each other now.

It’s a very logic thing to say, but I always want to say to guys ‘How do you know you’re going to have any, how do you think you’re always going to have the option?’ . I guess they don’t read too many articles about the decline of male fertility and the rest in the Western world. But, it’s the perfect way out. Poor A., she’d always thought it wouldn’t last… and it hasn’t. I’d like to know if anyone every takes any stats about how often there is a happy ending in things that look like they won’t have one from the outset. And would it stop anyone from trying… A. says she’s not broken hearted and it’s agreed, we’re all past broken hearts in our forties. It would simply seem unseemly to have not yet insulated against one.