Modern Love - Her Future Is in the Cards - NYTimes.com WILL he have a normal family? Andrea asked. After the demise of her long-term relationship, my friend had enlisted a psychic in a search for answers. Never having felt close to her ex's parents, she was hoping to avoid a repeat with whoever came next. "No one has a normal family," the psychic said. Normal is not a word. Andrea started to say something else, but he cut her off: "Get in the back seat, honey. You're busting up my flow. We were seated in a high-ceiling antechamber painted deep blue. Framed prints and paintings gave the place a fin-de-siècle feel, though the psychic was dressed in a nubby N.Y. Athletic Club hoodie and jeans. He doesn't allow his clients to record their sessions, but they can bring along a friend as a scribe. For Andrea, that scribe was me. It had been over a week since Andrea's fiancé moved out of the apartment they had shared in Brooklyn for nearly six years. That morning, the painters had arrived to patch the holes he'd punched in the walls - three in the living room alone. Although Andrea assured me his anger was reserved for the furnishings, never her, this revelation came as a shock. Her boyfriend had always seemed mild-mannered, the end of their relationship more death by ennui. He was a guy who, instead of burying a ring in a truffle or hiring a skywriter, proposed marriage with a shrug: "Well, I think we're ready to move forward." When Andrea asked me if I would come along to take notes at her tarot card reading, I agreed despite my skepticism. I figured this was something to help her get over the loss. A spiritual paint-and-spackle job of sorts. When we arrived, the psychic escorted us to a wooden table draped with purple cloth. He sat down across from Andrea, flanked by twin candles burning in translucent jars. A crystal ball in an iron stand rested on the table beside him, alongside a tube of Clarins hand cream, which I assumed was free of mystical associations. He shuffled the deck and told Andrea to think about what she wanted to ask. The cards are meant to work like mirrors, he explained, providing a CT scan of the psyche. It was the third time she had visited this psychic in 12 years. The other sessions were also arranged in the wake of romantic trauma, but this time her need was more pressing and specific. She had endured her unsatisfactory relationship for so long in part because she was afraid of winding up single, on the cusp of 40 and wanting a baby. But her understandable reluctance to bring a child into what she described as "a wall-punching situation" had landed her here anyway. Now she wanted to know: Will I ever meet someone? Will I have a baby? Three years ago, the psychic had done a reading for her sister and predicted she would fall in love with a man named Paul and have a baby. Which she proceeded to do - at 41. This is the status of most of my friends: well past 30, ionized by free-floating anxiety about children, when to have them, whether it will work. They trade careworn stories of Teflon uteruses and invincible sperm, that wife of someone's cousin who got pregnant at age 47 without so much as a cup of fertility tea. I've watched single friends hit their 30s and settle into a grim new determination, efficiently trawling dating sites looking less for love than for the attributes of a good baby sling: durable, pliant, hands-free. Outwardly, I do my best to support their swerve toward pragmatism. Inwardly, I yell melodramatic "80s song titles at them: "What About Love"! "Don't Stop Believin" "! Because even though I would take science over crystals any day, when it comes to love I'm still a romantic. And so is Andrea. She's not a fan of Internet dating. She believes in fate, in finding "the one." Even if she hasn't found him yet. I still remember that eerie feeling the night I met my future husband. We had walked the streets together for hours instead of going straight home after being introduced at the house of a mutual friend. We were both 17. Alina Simone is the author of the essay collection "You Must Go and Win."