can’t imagine what it would be like to be together without having children in front of you, it just sounds like a big blank. What are you going to do, travel? To see what? What would you be moving toward? What else would you be living for? Sex? Companionship? Being? Without the forward straining what is there to give you urgency? Just an inevitable end to everything? I’m talking too much, I don’t know why it’s irking me the way it is that she doesn’t want children, who cares, what is it to me? Plenty of my friends and patients don’t want them and it doesn’t put me in this state.

It occurs to me that maybe I’m the one who doesn’t want them.

Love isn’t about straining toward something, she says. Other people try to move you forward. And then I never think I love anyone enough to want to tie myself to them for all eternity, Clémentine says. It never feels like enough. But at the same time once I commit I have trouble leaving. Or at least I’ve had trouble in the past. I worry I might marry the wrong person merely because I couldn’t leave them.