“You’re like all the other German women,” Stefan said, quaffing his Bitburger beer. It was Christmas Eve, at our parents’ apartment. “You think you’re too good for German men. That’s why German men are marrying foreigners. All of you women have no real interest in having a family. Feminism has ruined you.”
This was outrageous enough, but it was the later conversation with my 37-year old sister that put me over the edge. She had had way too much to drink.
“You think because I’m a teacher, that I’m pretty boring, don’t you?” she asked me, in a drunken, challenging sort of way. Everyone else had gone to sleep. Sabina lives in Wiesbaden; she has a good position, an excellent salary and no man since her last relationship disintegrated. “Well, I think you might be a little surprised at how much fun I do manage to have.”
Before I could stop her, it all came out. How she’s ‘registered’ with an online website that sets her up with ‘hot’ dates. It’s all perfectly proper, she assured me. The men are all attractive, and she never has to do anything against her will.
“I’ve come to understand that I have a very strong sex drive,” she told me in a sly, confidential whisper that made my skin crawl. “It’s probably inherited, don’t you agree?”
All of this sent me to Dr. Becker’s office, where I blubbered for hours into the tissues she had discretely placed near the low-slung, Bauhaus-style leather chair I occupied once a week. She was kind, but she didn’t understand why I could not accept any of these things. Even though I am a trained physician, fully cognizant of how modern people live, I still could not help but wishing for, dreaming of, something better.
“So what is it that will make you happy, do you think?” Dr Becker asked. “You are not like your mother, or your siblings. You have worked hard through medical school. You are a professional, used to setting goals. Where do you want to be in five years? What do you envision your life to be like?”
The single answer that came immediately to my mind was embarrassing in its directness: I wanted children. I wanted to be a mother. What’s more, I wanted to be successful in a way that my mother never has been. I want a forever husband. I want a forever family. Where did I get such ideas?
Though she found my ideas distasteful and unbelievably naive, Doctor Becker is a good therapist, and a practical woman. “Some of that is under your control. So, what is the problem, then?”
The problem, of course, is that I have no man. And I know that finding a man to marry and have children with is pretty nearly an impossible goal these days in Germany. But that is not what Dr. Becker was referring to.
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