Are you more or less infertile if you don't actually want children?

For someone who has been described with some frequency by those who have met me & subsequently become friends, I can be a cold and unapproachable bitch. I don't know what the people who I don't become friends with think of me, because presumably I am too cold and bitchy for them to get to know me.

The irony is that I am actually rather open- if prodded, I will spill the beans on all sorts of things. So while I don't run around announcing that I am on the TTC trail, neither do I try to deny it if someone pushes as to my intentions in that regard. Accordingly I find myself having long TTC conversations with certain people, knowing full well I really shouldn't be discussing it, because it will only cause more confusion.

Case in point- I was talking to my good friend C. the other day. We went to university together and survived through a series of particularly grim lectures by writing notes back & forth. (I was infamous for my failure to take proper lecture notes, preferring to doodle mindlessly instead).

C. has recently also become a colleague and works along the hall. We meet for lunch a lot, are the same age, both have long term partners with some vague inkling to get married at some point, like hiking, drink beer and laugh about our ludicrious jobs. Key difference- I want to be a mother and C does not.

C. has never suggested otherwise, and so I have always approached my discussions about my attempted motherhood with her on the basis that I am dealing with someone whose goal in life is to avoid pregnancy. To be honest, it makes a rather refreshing change at times, and C. is so funny and endearing that I truly can never be irritated with her even when she comes out with the usual cliches.

So C. says, "How goes it on Planet Babymaking?"

"Mm. Not so much. Thyroid blah blah morphology blah blah."

C. raised her eyebrows. "Wow," she says, "that is fascinating. I wonder if I could get pregnant. Maybe I am infertile too. Guess I'll never find out, since I really never ever want kids! Hahahaha!"

Strangely, this was not as annoying as it sounds. I left instead intrigued. C. and I might both be infertile- she could be as medically challenged as I, but like she says, it will never even be an issue. The thing that is currently causing me so much aggravation is to her a blessing. Does that make me more infertile, because I want kids and maybe can't have them? Or her, because she hasn't got the slightest inclination to do anything about it one way or another...

if a tree falls in the wood.....