I was beginning to realize I wanted to have a baby. My husband , I knew, never would.

From the time we met, four years earlier, I had tried everything to rid myself of my desire. First, I went to a geneticist, hoping to learn that I shouldn’t have a baby, that there was something wrong with my genes. But one week later, the geneticist said, “All of your tests came back normal,” clearly believing this was what I wanted to hear.

It wasn’t. By my desperate, twisted logic, if my genes were messed up so badly that I couldn’t have children, then my relationship wouldn’t be doomed.

Next, I went to a fertility doctor, hoping he would tell me that my insides were nothing but a mess of muck and darkness where nothing would grow. But after giving my blood, I heard that word again: “Normal.”

My body wasn’t going to save my relationship. My boyfriend and I would have to do that ourselves.

I asked him about adoption after seeing an Ebola orphan on the cover of the weekend paper, but he was unmoved by my growing desire for a family. So I offered another solution: What if we lived apart and I had a baby on my own, but we stayed together? There was even a name for this — Living Apart Together — and an article about it in a glossy women’s magazine.