Would anyone consider it unreasonable if a woman filtered out potential internet dates who refused to consider having kids, or were unable to (due to injury or a vasectomy, for example)? Would this woman be guilty of "reducing men to their utility, specifically, their fertility"? This is, in effect, the argument that the author is putting forth, and it just doesn't make sense.

If you don't know a person at all, it's reasonable to filter for things you think are important: education, looks, willingness and ability to have kids, etc. You can make a set of more-or-less necessary conditions (but that of course doesn't guarantee that you'll find someone who's willing to be with you). The author thinks that having necessary conditions (specifically, the ability to have babies) is the same as having sufficient conditions, and she's dead wrong. These men want a woman who can have kids, but that doesn't mean they're reducing her to a baby-making-machine. They might also want love, a soulmate, etc. Maybe, just maybe, they would decide that, even though she can have babies, they wouldn't want to be with her because she tends to read the worst motives in others' behavior.

It's true that internet dating differs from real-world dating in that the filters are more rigid; they don't make exceptions for people with great personalities, for example. Maybe some of these guys would make an exception for an especially charming woman, but that's beyond what computers can do.

Having children is important enough to many people that being unable or unwilling to have kids is a dealbreaker in their search for a mate. I doubt anyone, male or female, would say this is totally unreasonable. Why does the author pick on men who want this, while she herself says she wants to have a family? It's not the men's fault that biology gives them a longer span of fertility than women. Maybe they want more than they can reasonably get -- but who doesn't?

If she just claimed to write about her feelings, this article would be OK. But when she talks about the older men, she doesn't say "I felt like this"; she says, basically, that they're pathetic, and she uses broad generalizations to get the audience to agree. They have paunches, thinning hair, lined faces - yuck. They were too committed to getting ahead that they didn't get families. Older men who want to have families deserve nothing but disdain for their own failure to do it earlier in life. Her attitude seems to be, "You missed your chance! Just give up."

She makes the flawed inference that because these men badly want kids, women are mere baby-incubators to them: one man says he wants someone "with a few years left on her clock," and she replies, "so you're looking for the next available womb." Huh? It sounds like she's getting defensive about her own ticking clock and so she thinks that it's the only thing that men care about: "these men were reducing women to their utility, specifically, their fertility, in service of their own delayed desires to have a child. I understood that once I had passed a predetermined number of years, I would no longer be of use..."

Dating isn't fair. It's not fair that some people are beautiful and others ugly. It's not fair that tall men get more attention from women. It's not fair that some men have the hazel eyes and cleft chin, and the brains and educations to write erudite letters, while others don't. It's not fair that men can have kids longer than women can. One can complain about all these unfairnesses, and yet not summarily condemn all the individuals on the other end. Maybe it's fair to pity them and be annoyed by them, but her scorn and disdain -- and her blanket generalizations -- are undeserved.

I'll agree that at the end, she starts qualifying her language and seems more able to see herself from the outside, but it's not enough to balance her earlier words.

The LW has been looking for reasons to end it since the beginning of the relationship. First it was the qualifiers she mentioned. Later she found a woman and told him that she wanted to leave him.

She's clearly very controlling and seems to feel secure only when she's got him under her thumb. For example, she threatens to leave him for someone else unless she gets what she wants (even though she knows that the someone else wouldn't work). Then she has guiltless affairs and wants him to just stop being insecure about it. Were there any apologies for sleeping around? She doesn't say so.

She says that in exchange for "not putting qualifiers on him," he has to "be there for me." The irony in that one sentence is deafening. Irony aside, this sentence also reveals unfairness. In a normal relationship, of course you're there for each other. But in this case, she hasn't shown at all how she is there for him (aside from encouraging him to go to Tibet -- perhaps to get him out of her hair?) and yet she wants him to be there for her, after all the crap she's put him through.

Is there anything the LW likes about this guy? I sure don't hear it in the letter. I don't claim this guy's a saint. Maybe he is unusually insecure -- after all, would a well-adjusted guy stay with this narcissistic harpy? I don't claim she's completely evil -- maybe they got together too young and she wants to explore what's out there, like other young people. It's clear, however, that this relationship is broken.

For his sake, the LW should end it. For her sake, the LW should end it.

Please, LW, just do it and stop wasting your life and his. It's not easy, but it has to be done.