No Children
I was in a long-term, committed relationship for about 12 years until the middle of last year. This was with the girl I was "supposed" to marry, as those things sometimes feel, until life came between us, as life sometimes does.
Ages ago, when we first met, I explained to her that children were, for me, a non-starter. I was willing to commit to her, but I asked her to promise me that if, in the future, she ever got to a point where she wanted children, that she would let me know right away. If this contingency ever arose, I was pretty sure that we'd have to split up.
In hindsight, I'm not sure if this was the correct thing to do. I'm not sure if I did it with enough tact. I was trying to be honest.
Early last year, she finally sat down with me and explained that she wanted children. She also added that she had wanted them for a couple of years, but had been afraid to tell me because, after a decade together, she didn't want to break up.
I was given six months to decide if I wanted to change my mind about having children. If I did, then we would work towards the goal of having children together. If not, then it was an unspoken truth that this would pretty much be the end for us.
This was a difficult six months for both of us. Not because of this looming deadline, though that would have been enough to drive any person a little crazy. It was the state of things in our relationship even before she finally told me she wanted children. Her desire to be a mother had hung unspoken between us for an extended period of time, but she had hidden this feeling from me out of fear that it would bring an end to our relationship.
The problem is that, even if you hide these kinds of feelings, the other person isn't unaware of them. I can't be sure of the chronology, but about a year and a half before she gave me the ultimatum, I started to feel as though I was not enough of a man for her. I truly started to feel inadequate. I didn't know why, so I started to look for a reason, grasping at whatever straw seemed to make sense. I did with my feelings what she did with hers: I hid them from her.
I'm not pointing fingers here. I'm a man, so far be it from me to claim that emotional avoidance is something that was somehow her fault, or something that she alone caused. I suspect we both hid parts of ourselves from each other over the years; some measure of this is probably healthy in any relationship. It seems that the children thing tipped the scales from healthy to unhealthy. We both started concealing large parts of ourselves from each other. We both started to grow on divergent paths, and we each hid this emotional growth from the other.
So we went into this six month ultimatum with this hanging over both of our heads. We both had the sense that something wasn't quite right in our relationship. Her expressing the desire for children didn't clear the lines of communication; it merely drove the wedge that was already between us slightly deeper.
At the end of the six months, I chose to leave her. Oddly, I had come to think that I perhaps wanted children, but in the end that mattered little to my decision. There was an increasing sense of strain on the relationship, and I didn't want to plunge into the decision to bring children into a family with so much uncertainty about our future hanging over my head. Perhaps therapy could have helped us, but I couldn't bring myself to agree to have children based on the blind faith that a psychologist could fix something that felt so broken.
I don't think my mistake was being honest with her early on about my own desire to avoid children. My mistake was cultivating a relationship in which she was afraid to share her feelings with me. I was 21 at the time we had this conversation about children and how the prospect might affect our future. I was young, naïve, and had no idea how to broach the subject, so I simply issued the command as if were logic in a computer program: if you ever want kids, then we'll break up, else we can live out the rest of our lives happily. Screw you, young me. This was far too heavy-handed. I didn't anticipate the details of a future in which we were both still together a decade later and that this would terrify her.
I share this for the same reason that I share any part of my story: because someone out there might identify with some part of this and learn something from it.
The last girl I approached about a romantic relationship (after I had left my long-time girlfriend) was very adamant about not wanting children; strangely, I found this certainty off-putting. Each is entitled to their own opinions and desires, but I've come to accept that desires aren't static things. I decided I didn't want kids when I was a teenager, preserved this feeling like a taxidermist stuffing a raccoon, and mounted the damned thing on a plaque. But these feelings and desires are very much like live raccoons that you must pick up and stroke carefully from time to time. They need care and feeding. And I'm using raccoons to draw this analogy because your feelings and desires will, just like real live raccoons, occasionally bare their teeth and bite your face off.
Come what may.
Ages ago, when we first met, I explained to her that children were, for me, a non-starter. I was willing to commit to her, but I asked her to promise me that if, in the future, she ever got to a point where she wanted children, that she would let me know right away. If this contingency ever arose, I was pretty sure that we'd have to split up.
In hindsight, I'm not sure if this was the correct thing to do. I'm not sure if I did it with enough tact. I was trying to be honest.
Early last year, she finally sat down with me and explained that she wanted children. She also added that she had wanted them for a couple of years, but had been afraid to tell me because, after a decade together, she didn't want to break up.
I was given six months to decide if I wanted to change my mind about having children. If I did, then we would work towards the goal of having children together. If not, then it was an unspoken truth that this would pretty much be the end for us.
This was a difficult six months for both of us. Not because of this looming deadline, though that would have been enough to drive any person a little crazy. It was the state of things in our relationship even before she finally told me she wanted children. Her desire to be a mother had hung unspoken between us for an extended period of time, but she had hidden this feeling from me out of fear that it would bring an end to our relationship.
The problem is that, even if you hide these kinds of feelings, the other person isn't unaware of them. I can't be sure of the chronology, but about a year and a half before she gave me the ultimatum, I started to feel as though I was not enough of a man for her. I truly started to feel inadequate. I didn't know why, so I started to look for a reason, grasping at whatever straw seemed to make sense. I did with my feelings what she did with hers: I hid them from her.
I'm not pointing fingers here. I'm a man, so far be it from me to claim that emotional avoidance is something that was somehow her fault, or something that she alone caused. I suspect we both hid parts of ourselves from each other over the years; some measure of this is probably healthy in any relationship. It seems that the children thing tipped the scales from healthy to unhealthy. We both started concealing large parts of ourselves from each other. We both started to grow on divergent paths, and we each hid this emotional growth from the other.
So we went into this six month ultimatum with this hanging over both of our heads. We both had the sense that something wasn't quite right in our relationship. Her expressing the desire for children didn't clear the lines of communication; it merely drove the wedge that was already between us slightly deeper.
At the end of the six months, I chose to leave her. Oddly, I had come to think that I perhaps wanted children, but in the end that mattered little to my decision. There was an increasing sense of strain on the relationship, and I didn't want to plunge into the decision to bring children into a family with so much uncertainty about our future hanging over my head. Perhaps therapy could have helped us, but I couldn't bring myself to agree to have children based on the blind faith that a psychologist could fix something that felt so broken.
I don't think my mistake was being honest with her early on about my own desire to avoid children. My mistake was cultivating a relationship in which she was afraid to share her feelings with me. I was 21 at the time we had this conversation about children and how the prospect might affect our future. I was young, naïve, and had no idea how to broach the subject, so I simply issued the command as if were logic in a computer program: if you ever want kids, then we'll break up, else we can live out the rest of our lives happily. Screw you, young me. This was far too heavy-handed. I didn't anticipate the details of a future in which we were both still together a decade later and that this would terrify her.
I share this for the same reason that I share any part of my story: because someone out there might identify with some part of this and learn something from it.
The last girl I approached about a romantic relationship (after I had left my long-time girlfriend) was very adamant about not wanting children; strangely, I found this certainty off-putting. Each is entitled to their own opinions and desires, but I've come to accept that desires aren't static things. I decided I didn't want kids when I was a teenager, preserved this feeling like a taxidermist stuffing a raccoon, and mounted the damned thing on a plaque. But these feelings and desires are very much like live raccoons that you must pick up and stroke carefully from time to time. They need care and feeding. And I'm using raccoons to draw this analogy because your feelings and desires will, just like real live raccoons, occasionally bare their teeth and bite your face off.
Come what may.