Quote:
Originally Posted by Rose76
I'm not saying marry him first and then nag him. I'm mainly saying "Do not give in to his demand, and let him figure out what to do next." He's being sly. He's trying to leave the ball in her court, so he can claim she did what she wanted. He is kind of banking on her being too in love to leave. (Which is how she sounds.) She can foil what I see as his game-playing by saying "I'm not giving up my dream of having a child . . . and I have no desire to leave." Let him be the one to walk out the door. (That's what a stand-up guy, sure of his life goals, would have done long before now.) I would advise any woman "Don't stay with a guy, if it seems like you care about his happiness more than he cares about yours."
To your other point: I do wonder about people who don't have what seem like "normal" interests and aspirations. I, personally, don't know any people who are childless, happy about it and living life fully. I have a link below to an article that says that more than half of people who choose not to have children end up regretting it.
Desire for Children Still Norm in U.S.
Theoretically, childlessness seems like it should be a viable option. And I totally endorse that people should do what they want, as I did. But I am suspicious of men who want wives, but want these wives to remain permanently childless. I am very suspicious of men like that. They do make a negative impression on me. I would be less unfavorably impressed, if the reluctance were on the part of the woman.
My suspicion is that a healthy, young man who wants a childless marriage is probably immature, or stingy, or stupid or self-centered, or doesn't want to be too tied to a woman he might get tired of. I am very slow to believe that the reasons people give you for why they want or don't want something (of this magnitude in importance) are actually the real reasons. It may be what they believe and want to believe . . . and want others to believe . . . but I say: Look a little deeper.
I also think there is something disingenuous about a guy who induces a woman to fall in love with him, initially saying he's not sure about kids (and might be willing to adopt), and then, after she is deeply invested in him, says he is 100% not interested in having kids. A guy pursuing a doctoral degree is a guy who does a lot of thinking. This guy strikes me as being a bit on the sneaky side. |
He told me he didn’t want children within the first 2 months of dating. It is not as if this was some hidden thing he dropped on me 4 years. He let me know right from the start that he never wanted kids. I fell in love long after I knew he didn’t want kids.
As a millennial this is something I got used to hearing and I felt it was something so far in the future that I couldn’t possibly address at that stage in my life or relationship. I didn’t picture myself as a mother or even think about children as I was a college student. I was barley out of my teen years!
The more we started dating the more we started talking about this and other future planning.
I was someone who always said “yeah, probably someday” about children and pictured many other things in my future before I pictured being a mother and I always said “IF I have kids...” not “when I have kids”. As we got more into it I realized HOW MUCH he didn’t want kids and how much I did. For example my best friend always said she never wanted kids but has moments where she says “maybe someday”. Seeing how much my boyfriend didn’t want them is what actually made me realize that I did want them.
We spent a year of long distance talking about it (I didn’t move right away). He specifically said “before you move here you have to know that I probably don’t want kids”. We explored it more and came to the conclusion that he would consider adopting but only 1 child. He wasn’t happy with the outcome and I still wasn’t happy with this but I moved anyway thinking what many of you on here think: I’m young, I have time to figure this out, I wouldn’t be having kids for many years in the future. I made a very thoughtful decision to move and don’t regret it for a second because I know I would regret not moving.
He spent this past year convincing himself into having kids to stay with me. It was only within the last 2 or 3 months where he realized he really didn’t want them and has come to the conclusion where he just can’t do it. There was never a point where he was happy or excited about the idea. Even when he said he was willing to do it It was always filled with anxiety and unhappiness. The more he got into babysitting and working with kids the more he realized just how much he DIDNT want kids. Agreeing to have kids made him want them less.
So It’s not like he waited till I fell in love to drop the ball. I literally knew from one of our first few dates. You may be forgetting my age in all of this and that over the course of our relationship I have really learned a lot about myself as a person and what I want out of life (and still have a lot of growth to go).
Also you said you don’t understand why a heathy man wouldn’t want kids. He has a lot of health complications and has battled cancer in the past. In the course of our relationship he’s had two tumors and has other health challenges I won’t disclose. This is one reason behind not wanting kids.