When my boyfriend and I met we knew we weren't a great match on the kids question, I was a probably-yes and he's a probably-no. But we liked each other and honestly I'm shit at relationships and didn't expect it to last so we kept seeing each other. Well, it has lasted and now his job is asking him to move to a different town, and he wants me to come with him, like move in together. Get a dog.

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I don't want a dog, I want a family. I want a daughter with his red hair, named after my mother. I made a joke about having kids this afternoon and his response was "haha I hope not." Christ, I don't even want to move to a town in the middle of the mountains, I want to go home to where my family lives, which is a totally different state. If we talk about it, I think we'll just realize that we're not probably-yes and probably-no, we're a yes and a no and totally incompatible. And then what keeps me here? I just finished grad school, and don't have a job lined up, my current job has turned me down for a full time position and my department doesn't have work for me until summer at the soonest. I don't have any job contacts where my family lives, or any friends from high school or anything. It would be pretty much starting over. I was really, really lonely before my boyfriend and I started dating, and this wouldn't be one of those breakups where you're angry at the other person and glad to be done with them, I'd just be lonely and sad and miss him. I keep dodging the conversation about moving in together because I can't agree to move in without having the kids conversation and I'm so convinced the kids conversation will lead to us breaking up.

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As long as grad school kept going I didn't have to make big decisions like this, just keep plugging away at my research. Now it's done and I have to decide about career and relationships and family and I feel totally unequipped to make any of these decisions and afraid of losing people I love, or the possibility of kids I would love if they existed. I don't know what to do.