[fernendo]

Me and my girlfriend have been together approximately 3.5 years She is 32 Im 27. During this time she has had a very serious back injury which has made her pretty much wheelchair bound (she can walk small distances) due to this
she has put on a lot of weight which has made me less attracted to her physically.

She has also suffered understandably from serious depression and self harm due to her chronic back pain.

We do still have sex sometimes when her back isn't too sore and we both enjoy kissing cuddling etc. We both love each other a lot and rarely argue and when we do its short lived. We both trust each other 100%

We share a lot of the same life goals such as shunning consumerism, shunning TV, being as self sufficient as possible, enjoying the simple things life has to offer etc. These qualities are very important to me and are hard to find in a girl as most these days seem to be hypnotised with consumerism and other meaningless pursuits.

She looks after her niece really well even though it makes her sore and tired. She only does 1 day at a time I'm not sure how she would cope with looking after the child longer. She has great maternal instinct.


She has a really stong desire for a baby *really* strong. This has freaked me out. I have the following worries:-

@ What if her depression comes back really bad.

@ What if the strain of having children and her serious injury / mental health problems breaks us up.

@ What if the medicine she is on adversely effects the baby?

@ What is having a baby makes her back much worse?

@ Sometimes I fantasise about other girls a lot what if I get too sexually frustrated due to her change in appearance, lack of ability to have regular sex due to her injury and the fact that I will only have 1 sex partner my whole life? Do these feeling go away when you become a parent?

@ She is the only girl I have ever been with and I worry that I won't feel fulfilled with having just 1 sex partner my whole life.

@ What if we decide to break up instead of having a baby and I regret having lost such a great, loving and trusting relationship.

@ Breaking up with her would absolutely destroy us both. We both had pretty miserable lives before we met and fell in love.

@ The idea of having a baby and being responsible for it my whole life terrifies me but at the same time the idea of being afraid to do it and wasting my life living in fear terrifies me also. I believe the country I live in will soon be hit a huge economic collapse and the idea of "moving out to the sticks" and being self sufficient with her is really tempting if I don't find someone to be self sufficient with soon the collapse will hit and it will be too late. I can't do it on my own as I would be far too lonely.

I'm going to arrange relationship counselling to try and resolve these issues but there is a long wait for it and I wondered what you people think I should do .

[adam_k]

My wife has the same feelings as her. For women there is a timeclock on when they can have a baby. There is an uncontrollable urge to make it happen. I think the important thing is to talk to her about how you feel about it and bring up your concerns with her. It takes two people to agree on things to make it work. She is the only one who can relieve your concerns.

[hamster-bamster]

You will need to talk to her about having other partners because it seems unrealistic to expect that you would stop wanting to have other partners, and no, having a child would do absolutely nothing to stop your desire to have there partners because there is no magic. So you will just need to talk to her about your having other partners without necessarily leaving her.

So that is about the issue of other partners.

I do have a friend who is into self-sufficiency. You can combine self-sufficiency with having children and she even takes her twin daughters camping to Stone Age camps where they are taught self-sufficiency.

I do not know though how you would do that with a wheelchair-bound person.

You will find that self-sufficiency and anti-consumerisum coexist with polyamory quite happily so you should do well with having other female partners in an open fashion.

The questions about the back pain possibly getting worse from having a baby and the effects of back pain medication on the developing fetus and/or breastfed baby will all need to be answered by healthcare professionals and it seems that the first thing to do is to have these questioned answered in order to start accumulating the facts that would figure into your decision making process.

Good luck!

it is very likely that having a baby will make her back pain worse. she is also nearing the end of her fertility and the complications that could arise from the combination of her being 32 and already having a bad back and being on medication are numerous. adoption would be a better way to go, based solely on how hard it might be for her to even get pregnant, let alone carry the baby full-term in good health.

as for you, a child is a huge responsibility. if you don't think you can handle it, you need to let your partner know. she will need your help with the child, obviously, and if you're not 100% on board with this then she needs to know right away.

i'm not even going to get into the part about sex with other people, because i couldn't be in a polyamorous relationship even if i tried. nope. that might work for some people but that just would not work for me at all.

as for self-sufficiency, wouldn't that require you to be able to be self-sufficient on your own as well? meaning you should be able to handle being on your own? not very self-sufficient if you still have to rely on someone else. but that's just my personal view on it.

[hamster-bamster]

That is true that she would not be self-sufficient.

She is not nearing the end of her fertility, although she is becoming less fertile.

[hamster-bamster]

Originally Posted by DreamAddiction37

i'm not even going to get into the part about sex with other people, because i couldn't be in a polyamorous relationship even if i tried. nope. that might work for some people but that just would not work for me at all.

I recommended new partners to OP, not to you, based on OP's stated desire to have new partners.

Originally Posted by hamster-bamster

I recommended new partners to OP, not to you, based on OP's stated desire to have new partners.

I wasn't talking to you, just stating my opinion on it.

[Perna]

Originally Posted by adam_k

There is an uncontrollable urge to make it happen.

That's a fallacy, Adam; it's no more uncontrollable than any other biological urge; I don't see you having sex with every woman you meet because, we all know, men have to have sex all the time?

It does not sound like you can support a child at this time, fernendo, give a child the fathering you believe a child should have? That's all you can go with, pretty much as that is your part, being a good father. If you have doubts about that role for yourself, whether you will be around or the mother of your child would be a fit mother, etc. then you probably should not have a child right now?

It does not sound like your girlfriend is able to care for herself adequately and I would not want to be a partner to bringing another person into the world in that situation; my husband had children from a previous marriage and made it my decision whether to have children with him when we married and I opted not to; I would want a father for any children of mine who wanted those children too, it's a joint decision and he was opting out. I think if you are freaking out, you should opt out at this time.

There's nothing wrong with not having a child and "wanting a baby" is, as Adam points out a biological urge, I did not hear anything in your description of your girlfriend that she is interested in raising a child with you.

[hamster-bamster]

Originally Posted by DreamAddiction37

I wasn't talking to you, just stating my opinion on it.

If that is the case, it warrants another thread so that we can stop on topic of OP's needs in the current thread.

[KittyKay]

Perna is right, again!