Getting Into Your Genes

I'm 27 and passionately in love with a 24-year-old woman I just started dating. I said something in passing about not knowing whether I want kids, and she said, "If I'm not pregnant within two years by you, I'll get pregnant by somebody else." Shocked, I asked who. Her answer: "Preferably a friend, but it doesn't really matter." My jaw dropped. I wonder whether I even matter or I am just being used.

--Disturbed

You were probably picturing yourself as more of a sex machine than a sperm dispenser. (If there's a movie of your relationship in your mind, it's the kind that gets blocked by Net Nanny software. In hers, Julie Andrews and the Von Trapp children are bounding through the meadows in their clothes made out of curtains.) The fact that her romantic role model seems to be the speeding bullet doesn't mean that she isn't into you or that she's using you. In fact, her honesty suggests otherwise. (She didn't let you get all attached only to tell you to either dad up or get out.) But, numerous studies splashed across the media show that single parenting disadvantages kids economically, emotionally, in school performance, and in their later relationships, and troublingly, all she can think about is the tumbleweed blowing around her empty womb. If you know you don't want kids, now's the time to leave. If you aren't sure, you can stick around and try to figure it out, but the giant ticking uterus hanging over your head may warp the course of getting to know her. After all, it's kind of a romance-killer to be hearing "It had to be you..." while you know she's thinking, "Then again, the UPS guy looks like he has a healthy sperm count."