Member-only story
The Dating Deadline
At what point do we sacrifice romance for fertility?
My girlfriends and I sit around our favorite Brooklyn restaurant, red wine flowing, lights dim. We’re all in our late thirties, have jobs we love, friendships we cherish, passions that keep us up at night.
And we are all single.
It’s not news that New York is a terrible dating scene for straight women. My girlfriends and I have been enduring bad dates for years. At one point we coordinated a weekly meeting to review a Google spreadsheet of our collective dates so none of us had to make the same mistake twice. A crummy dating scene for women is par for the getting-older course.
But now the stakes feel higher. In a few years we won’t be able to have children, at least not naturally. This has always been a distant reality, a problem saved for later. Pregnancy is so ingrained in our image of the female experience we rarely think to question it. But now the time has come, it seems. Like a particularly challenging Escape Room, we have to act quick.
I’m the woman I made fun of in my twenties, early thirties, even.
Love finds you when you stop looking for it, is a ridiculous thing my mom used to tell me until I got angry enough to make her stop. When I’m not looking for love I’m exhausted on my couch after work, binging on Netflix, curled up in bed reading a book, or still at work. When I’m at work I’m working. I am not particularly attractive when I’m working. Actually, at this point in my career, I make an active effort not to look attractive, lest some creep makes an inappropriate move and I have to spend my mental energy dealing with it. When I go out I’m with friends who have grown to be like family, talking over cozy dinners, not falling over casual acquaintances ready to pick each other up at the first sign of a smile, like the parties I frequented in my twenties.
Women in their thirties, especially the busy ones, have to make an effort.
The problem with anything that takes effort, though, is that it gets tiring. Recently exhausted, I took a break from online dating. Accepting the occasional romance but rarely seeking it. It was great. I deepened friendships, entertained a few flings…
