Feeling the pressure on August 24, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

This urgent request for advice comes to you after many, many long hours of introspection, second-guessing, bad dreams, and profesional therapy.

I have been in a relationship with Robert for over four years. We have been exclusive for that entire time, and even lived together for one year. I moved out of his apartment about 7 months ago, and we have been going through a very stressful period of almost breaking up, and then trying again since then.

Although we have some pretty basic communication problems, and do tend to push each other’s buttons a little too much, the main problem has boiled down to my wanting to get married and start a family, and his not wanting the responibility of children in his life.

I am 36 (he’s 42) and for me the ticking has suddenly become VERY loud. I do love him, and we have a special connection that I’m afraid I may not find again with someone else. But he has made it clear that his feeling about having a family are not going to change, and I am left with the choice — stay with him and give up my desire for a family, or move on, and hope that within the next four years or so, I will meet someone, who will want all the same things I do.

I have been struggling with this situation for so long, and I just can’t seem to find the answer. It is truly making me crazy, and any help, or insights you can give would be a blessing.

–Viki

BG’s take after the jump!

In the future…Allie pretty much has dated the last man on earth — and he broke her heart. Even as the biological clock ticks for her entire species, can Allie find love on DateAHuman.com? Tune into this camptastic A-Handmaid’s-Tale-meets-Earth-Girls-Are-Easy Web series (featuring FOBG Phil Lamarr) to find out!

Cutting bait on February 23, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

I have been dating the same guy for eight years and we have both been faithful to each other religiously. He says that he loves me. The only problem is that I can’t seem to get him to commit to our relationship (I mean marriage). I’m not getting any younger (I’m 28), and I want babies! Any advice?

— Cameo

Dear Cameo,

This is easy for Breakup Girl (who is older than not getting any younger) to say, but here it is: walk. I don’t mean that you should say, “I’m walking out if you don’t commit! Look at me! Here I go! Yoo-hoo! I’m walking! I am so walking sort of near that door! Waaaaalking! Watch me go…!” I also don’t mean walk out the door, and then walk by his house ten minutes later to see if he’s committed “yet.” I mean: walk.

What, does Breakup Girl believe that a relationship ain’t no thing if it ain’t got that ring? No. Does she want to promote the stereotype that a girl’s best friend is all a woman wants, needs, and hopes for? No. I’m just going with what you’re telling me: that marriage and babies are what you want, and that they may not, alas, be available in your current (eight-year!) relationship. You can’t get him to commit; go get what you want with someone who wants the same thing. And the thing is — I hesitate to say this, because I am in NO way advocating game-playing — but, well, when you walk, this guy just might realize that he is that someone.

Love,
Breakup Girl

Since we aren’t all lucky enough to be tasked with the top-secret duty of raising the Baby of Infinite Cuteness, some of us single gals have to consider turning to alternative means to heed the call to motherhood.

I was just sharing with my 20-something roommate this week my increasingly serious thought to stop waiting for a man and just have a baby on my own. As she has, by comparison, all the time in the world, she thought I was insane. But as it turns out, I’m neither insane, nor alone.

Writing at Babble.com, Nan Mooney recently detailed her attempt to get pregnant without a boyfriend — complete with Pulp Fiction soundtrack — and its seemingly happy ending. So much so that she’s contemplating Kid #2 with apparently awesome babydaddy Zachary.

I love him. It’s not the kind of connection I’d searched for in the past, the romantic whirlwind that would end in registering at Target or eloping to France. It’s the kind that stems from being on the receiving end of a single act of tremendous generosity. When, a couple of months in, I finally worked up the courage to ask Zachary why he agreed to do this, his answer left me no doubt that I’d made the right choice: “I just thought you’d make a really good mom.”

It’s a sweet, compelling piece about adjusting to a different kind of three-way love. That said — sue me — I’m still not sure I’m quite willing to give up the Target-registry dream. Though yes, I hear they have them for babies, too.

For Special Agent Jackie Bauer it’s the biological clock that’s ticking…

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