When would you actually want to start that chapter, and what does "once we're solid" mean in months rather than adjectives? Mine was 34.

A year to two years. Married, and starting on kids.

That's the real answer. Here's the reasoning behind it, rather than making you extract it.

The gate isn't a date, it's one thing: whether two people this different actually work in ordinary life. We match on what's easy to spot — the humour, the way we both go at things head first. Underneath that we are not remotely the same person. You plan, I move. You close tabs, I open them. I don't think that's a problem to be solved, I think it's the point, and it's a good part of why I like you — I have a lot of respect for people built differently to me. But I'd be lying if I said I already know how that runs day to day, because neither of us does. That's not doubt. It's the one piece of information we genuinely don't have yet.

So: we meet, we spend real time — the boring kind, not the highlight kind — and if a few months of that shows we work rather than just entertain each other, I'm not going to sit around admiring it.

Now the honest arithmetic, because you gave me yours and you deserve to see mine held up against it.

You said from 34, and that past 35 isn't ideal. The front of my range meets that. The back of it doesn't, quite. So it's the front I'm aiming at — and I'd rather tell you that now than have you discover in a year that I was being vague on purpose.

Two. Not three. And I'd want a boy and a girl, if we're taking orders — which is what you said too, right down to the boy first. So either we're both a bit old-fashioned, or we're both right.