She Ran a 2,000-Person Division. At Night, She Asked Me for a Baby.

A Woman’s Desire Is Normal

She asked me once. It was two in the morning. She had just finished a cross-continental conference call. Her hair was still wet. She lay against my chest and said, "Is there something wrong with me? During the day I tear people apart in meetings. At night I want to have your child."

I didn’t answer. I pulled her closer. Her nails pressed into my back.

We met when she was at her lowest. She had graduated from a top university. She had made it into management at her first company. Then a non-compete agreement forced her out. She had to switch industries and start over. At the new company, people criticized her. Colleagues pushed her aside. She often came down from the upper floor with red eyes. She would stand still for a moment, then lay her head on her desk and cry quietly.

I handed her a tissue. She didn’t take it. She turned her employee badge over.

The next day I left a cup of warm soy milk at the corner of her desk. She never accepted things from other people. That day she drank it. Halfway through, she looked up at me once, then looked down again. Later she said, "I was just too tired that day."

She asked me to dinner. She asked me to a movie. She gave me chances. She left openings. We ended up together. Early on, she liked to show me her soft side. She said that after being knocked around everywhere, her ambition had worn down. She wanted an ordinary job, a life with me, marriage, a child.

When she gave gifts, she only gave things that would be used up. Skincare. Perfume. She said that way nothing would remain. If we broke up, she wouldn’t leave a box of memories behind. We were still in the middle of our honeymoon phase when she said this. I told her she was sick in the head, thinking about breaking up while we were in love. She said her teacher once told her that people who get into 985 universities have different brain wiring from normal people.

She was smarter than me. Stronger than me. She said we would never end up together. She would sigh and quietly cry.

In bed, she became a different person. Once the hormones rose, she became tender, soft, without reason. She had nothing left but love and desire. She murmured that she wanted to give me a child. She said, "If I get pregnant, we’ll get married, okay?" For a while afterward, she became more lively and open. It was hard to imagine that half an hour earlier, she had been crying and saying we would never have a future.

Once she worked until dawn. I bought stomach medicine and porridge and left them on her desk. She didn’t thank me. The next day, there was a box of keyboard cover on my desk. I put it on. She walked past, didn’t look at me, and tapped the corner of my desk twice with her fingers.

Another time, the night before her promotion, she was smoking on the balcony. I took the cigarette away. She didn’t resist. She leaned on my shoulder for three minutes. Someone honked downstairs. She didn’t move. After three minutes, she stood straight and said, "I have to get up early tomorrow."

She rose quickly. By chance, by being pushed into the role, she climbed step by step from an ordinary employee to general manager of a business division. More than two thousand people. After work, when we ate, all she talked about was trouble at the office. She was not qualified for her position. Her subordinates didn’t accept her. She had to make an example of someone and fire a long-time company veteran. She became irritable and angry. If I had even a slightly different opinion, she could argue with me until neither of us could speak.

She said, "At work I have to hold it in. I don’t want to hold it in after work too." I said, "So when you don’t want to hold it in, you come to me to vent? I take crap from my boss at work, and then I take your crap after work?"

Once she came back from a business trip. In the elevator, she moved close to me. Her lips almost touched mine. Her phone rang. She immediately pulled back and pressed the nearest floor. The doors opened. She walked out to take the call. Her back was straight.

That night she came home and dropped her keys on the floor. She didn’t pick them up. I did. She said, "We should never have started." She pushed me. It wasn’t strong, but I took two steps back.

Later she fired a company veteran. When she came home, she threw her bag on the sofa and said the man had been with the company for ten years. I said, "You can’t bring company emotions home." She said, "Then don’t be in my home." She froze. The keys fell again. This time she didn’t pick them up, and she didn’t let me pick them up either. She went into the bedroom and closed the door.

We broke up. She moved out. There was her long hair in the bathroom drain. I picked it up and threw it away. In the fridge were the perfume samples she had bought. I sprayed one. It was too sharp. I opened the window. The skincare she had given me was used up. I didn’t keep the bottles.

That company still went bankrupt. She wanted to turn it around, but it was not something she could save. She had known the ending early on. She said the chance to be an executive at a listed company was rare, and turning it down would have been a waste. I agreed. Later, she easily moved to another listed company as a mid-level manager.

Half a year later, she sent me a message: "Is there something wrong with me?"

I didn’t lecture her. I took a photo of the empty stomach medicine box she had given me back then and sent it to her. I said, "You were just hungry."

She didn’t reply.

Another half year passed. I saw her name on an executive list. Next to it was her new company. I closed the page. The pothos vine hung down to the edge of the desk. I moved the pot to where there was light.

Someone honked downstairs. I forgot to close the fridge door.

A woman’s desire is normal. It is human. Women get hungry and lonely. They want to be wanted. Desire is not a male-only property, and it is not a woman’s shame. Hormones, nerves, emotions, relationships, safety, and context all produce it. For a long time, society wrote two scripts for women: a good woman should not want too much, and a strong woman should not be soft. So many women learn to hide desire and softness. They translate "I want you" into "whatever." They translate "I need you" into "you should go."

My ex-girlfriend was a master of that translation.

Women’s desire is often more contextual than men’s. A man can be set on fire by a look, an impulse, hormones. A woman often needs safety, respect, being desired, intimacy, and relaxation before she opens. That is called responsive desire. It does not mean women have no desire. It means women’s desire often needs a door. That door might be trust, emotion, or the feeling that she does not have to be the general manager in front of you.

She became a different person in bed because in that moment she took off her armor. During the day, she had to be rational, strong, in control, and commanding in a division of two thousand people. At night, she could be soft and clingy. She could say, "Give me a child." For a short time, she did not have to be anyone’s executive. She could just be a woman.

Sexual arousal and orgasm bring changes in dopamine, endorphins, and oxytocin. They make people relax, trust, and feel close. Rational defenses drop. When she said, "If I get pregnant, we’ll get married, okay?" she may have been speaking in the heat of the moment, fantasizing, or expressing emotion. It did not necessarily equal a decision made in a clear state of mind. When she was clear-headed, she said, "We will never have a result." That was a cognitive judgment, a choice about the path of her life. Both could be true at the same time.

She was not lying in bed, and she was not lying when she was clear-headed either. She wanted two things at once: the peak of a career and the safety of an ordinary embrace. Those two things often do not live in the same life, or in the same person.

Sex is not a contract. A promise made in bed cannot be treated as a real-world agreement. But the emotion in bed was not performance. Neither were her desire, her softness, or her tears. She was a strong woman who, in the cracks of her armor, briefly allowed herself to want love, touch, a child, an ordinary life.

A woman can want a career and love, strength and softness, reason and arousal. Sometimes fate does not allow both. She finally walked toward her work. I was a place she stayed for a while.

Maybe one day she really will appear on an executive list. When that day comes, I will remember that years ago, a woman murmured at night that she wanted to give me a child. It was not fake or a disease or a loss of control. It was the part of her that had taken off her armor.