never really works. I had a quite intense relationship in college, my first one, after a rough upbringing and when it ended I was shattered, and did some stupid things in the wake of the breakup.

Years later the man contacts me and out of guilt or his own need for closure or what have you, wants to strike up a correspondence and then he says he wants to get together. Since we lived on different continents, this would have involved some planning. I said no to the meeting, but the correspondence continued. It became hurtful and very unhealthy, pulled open all the old wounds, and was overall about the worst idea on the planet. And he expected this meeting to take place in spite of his wife and my husband. Nice.

Just forget about it. You are really struggling with a desire to change the past and get a different outcome. He's gone means he's gone. You are lucky that he's dead, if he was alive I have a feeling he'd still be tempting you. It's hard to accept but sometimes there is no good outcome and nothing can be "fixed" in retrospect. And for God's sake leave the wife out of it, she has suffered enough.

who is thinking about the babies in this situation? Nobody.

I know people who face infertility are unhappy about it. I was told for years I was possibly infertile. But I rejected the notion of extreme measures for the reason stated above.

Parents who insist on biological reproduction over every other option are being, IMHO, immature and extremely selfish. Now there are 12 babies in the preemie unit who are at risk for a lifetime of problems.

I knew a woman in her late forties who panicked about her clock running out and went to the fertility clinic and had triplets. One of the three is severely disabled; the other two less so. The mother decided she couldn't handle it and went back to her job. The father is a high powered career type who has no interest in "defective" offspring either. The children are in the care of an exhausted and overworked foreign au pair girl, who won't leave because she worries about the kids. Oh, and the biological "mother" has a hissy fit whenever one of the more normal triplets calls the nanny "mommy". She doesn't care about what the one with the bad cerebral palsy says.

I don't know what the answer is other than doctors refusing to plant so many eggs. Some of these multiples don't result from IVF though. Maybe people just need to stop acting like it's the most enormous tragedy in the history of the planet when a woman doesn't breed. I think some of these women, especially the older ones who are settled in their careers, are having kids because everyone else has had them and there's so much romancing about the mommy role. A lot of women don't really want kids when you get down to it but there is so much societal pressure to have them. I think the same is true of men who become fathers. Some love it and some feel very trapped, but it isn't very acceptable to say so.

And if in your late 30s or early 40s your career isn't all you dreamed of, if you are a man you have to make a course correction and fix it. If you are a woman you have another option; drop out and have a kid. Everyone will praise you for it and you can preach to everybody else about how you finally saw the light and now have "the most important job in the world". I know even single women who have gone for multiple IVF treatments to do this. One of them told me, "well, at work I'm not exactly burning up the world like I thought I would, you know?" Now she's sitting in the preemie unit of the hospital with a 1 pounder struggling to breathe.

These babies are suffering. I have no sympathy for the mothers. I find them completely selfish.

Let the flaming commence.

the suburban culture being centered around a nuclear family makes it hard for women to establish other lifetime relationships that are fulfilling. Basically you sit in those suburbs you get lonely. If people lived in other kinds of communities with people/kids running in and out would they ache for their own kids so much? Do they have a biological urge to reproduce or do they just want company?

That's a tough one, but someone risking the more drastic fertility treatments should be willing to ask the tough questions.

Melthough, many couples with their own biological children DO adopt other children as well. I don't understand why you are carrying on about that--it happens! The Jolie-Pitts come to mind, whatever you may think of them. Many ordinary non-celebrity couples do as well. Please lighten up on this point.