My father died when I was ten. It made me from a happy-go-lucky kid to one who was very sad. I missed all that wisdom and love he could have given me. But, I also love my mother, who was silent about her difficult life and she was beautiful. She was a run-way model and commercial artist when she met my father. Her situation when my father died meant that she was going to have a hard time. She sacrificed everything for us (my sister and me). So, when I think of relationships and the potential for having babies, I am in shock. I look at my mother's situation as the rolemodel. I pick women, who remind me of her. Fragments in her personality that are either good or bad. Or, like you say, whatever we are looking for, we will get. Each woman I loved was a Republican and wanted to have babies. They represented the point of view that sees what you have is how you will be judged. Money and success is how they judged me. It is how I judged myself. I sabotaged each relationship, if I can be so bold, because it implies that the actually liked me, by being constantly disturbed by my job and how inferior I felt. I wanted to be like my father, who was a doctor, but I am like my mother. My life is to constantly dream and contemplate. I live in a world of ideas. She made no money after she had us. Art is a tough world. It seems that no matter what I did over the years, it never turned into financial success, (which is why I have a "day job.") which is what those women required. And I required it in myself if I ever felt "worthy" of a woman, who could potentially lose me as a support system and put our children into the mindset that I lived with. Thank you for this piece. It is helping me see what's been happening.