My Husband Doesn't Want To Have Children

[KellyRowland]

My husband and I have been married for 8 years (8 years in May) and been together for 14 years. My husband has only just said today that he doesn't want to have children. I've always knew I wanted to have children. I'm 37 and my husband is 39.

We started talking about getting married and having children when we were with eachother for a month and my husband was first to bring the subject up. If he said he didn't want to have children, I would have broke up with him because I knew that not having children would make me unhappy, and I've been madly in love with my husband since the night I met him. I couldn't stay with someone who didn't want to have children no matter how much I loved them.

A year before we got married, my husband said we would start ttc after our honeymoon. After we had been on our honeymoon, he said he wasn't ready to have children yet, so he said "we'll wait till next year" and I was ok with that, and we continued to talk about future children. A year after that when I asked him if we could start trying, he said the same thing, and he has been saying that every year.

Today we had one of our friends at our house, and my friend my husband and I had a chat, and one of the things my husband said to her was that he doesn't know if he wants to have children. But he said he might want to start a family in 3 years. If we wait another 3 years I will be 40, and I've heard that you have less chance of getting pregnant after 40. Even if I do start trying at the time and I do get pregnant, there is a big chance that we will only have 1 child and I want to have 3 children, 2 would be enough but to me, only having 1 child is just as sad as not having any children at all.

I have been crying on and off all day, so I probably won't be able to sleep tonight. I feel that I'll be upset forever unless I do get pregnant, so I feel we will need to either start trying now or I'll need to break up with him now. What would be the best thing to do?

If he's not ready now (after all this time together and at his age) then he never will be. You've been hopelessly naive to wait this long. However your comments about only children are offensive and make you sound incredibly immature so maybe it's best you don't have children

Easy for you to say. I expect you have your children or a child. And my reply doesn't take the biscuit; the world is full of men whose children have had very little impact on their lives at all. My niece is one of them, and she was an oops baby, and she's sure glad she's here despite her less than perfect birth circs. She has a beautiful life fulfilling her calling in the Armed Forces and is glad to be alive. Not having an involved dad isn't the worst thing in the world. Didn't stop Barack Obama from becoming President of the free world, did it?

You do realise that if everyone waited for the perfect circs to have kids, very many people would never get to have them?

I read it somewhere recently. Maybe Google it. I will try to find it.

If I had to choose between a child and a moral compass, I'd choose the child any day.

I'm so sorry. My heart goes out to you.

A year before we got married, my husband said we would start ttc after our honeymoon. After we had been on our honeymoon, he said he wasn't ready to have children yet, so he said "we'll wait till next year" and I was ok with that, and we continued to talk about future children. A year after that when I asked him if we could start trying, he said the same thing, and he has been saying that every year

He just didn't want to face losing you, so delaying actually telling you he didn't want them was easier. It's likely he knowingly wasted your time because he was putting his own needs first.

But he said he might want to start a family in 3 years. If we wait another 3 years I will be 40, and I've heard that you have less chance of getting pregnant after 40.

Don’t waste a second longer on this man. Unless he's genuinely stupid, he knows full well that even now might be too late for you, and by 40 you may not have children at all. Some women do, but it shouldn't ba given and from age 35 you are more likely to have a child with disabilities, and his sperm will have deteriorated as well.

I'm sorry OP, but he must think you're an idiot, and can waste another 3 years until you're infertile, and even then I can bet he'll still try to delay.

Oh obviously the OP didn't mean it. She was just upset. I don't blame the OP for not coming back after so many people took that and ran with it, and used it as an excuse to stamp all over her.

Me too, but unfortunately, it's not that unusual a situation to encounter.

I'd much rather be a cunt with a child than virtuous and alone, if I was backed into the same corner as the OP.

You absolutely don't have time to wait if you want more than one. We've been through the fertility testing after trying from 33-40 to have our third baby with no sucess, the stat that sticks with me is my doctor telling me that by 40 the numbers are fairly evenly split that 1/3 of women can still get pregnant fairly easily within 6 months, 1/3 will need some intervention or will fall pregnant within a longer 18 month timescale, and 1/3 are no longer 'spontaneously fertile'. Fertility declines rapidly after 35, at 37 you're assuming you'd get pregnant quickly, carry without incident, heal quickly and go again very quickly to still have 3 babies on the horizon. He can have babies for the next 40 years if he so chooses, you cannot. After 14 years he's happy with the satus quo, if he wanted babies you'd have them by now.

About the difference, I'm not privy to how your child happened, am I? Sorry if I used the wrong term for what went down.

Also, how do you know it was fraud and not a contraception failure?

Just to be clear, I wouldn't normally advocate deception. In this case, I'm advocating it because the OP is backed into a corner and has desperately wanted children for years. I don't see why she has to live without children because her husband has been so awful to her. He's chased her into the Last Chance Saloon, and if he ends up a dad, tough. There are consequences for playing with someone's life like this. He's actually lucky that she came on here and discussed it instead of just buying some smoke-show lingerie and seducing him. He's perfectly welcome to use a condom or get the snip. He has choices.

If OP was early thirties, no way would I be advocating this.

Please do. I am struggling to believe that half of the population exists because women have deceived men into fathering their children.

I suspect what you’ve read is that half of babies born are unplanned (contraception failure or people being cavalier about contraception or not using it properly) which is not the same thing as deliberate deceit.

He's chased her into the Last Chance Saloon, and if he ends up a dad, tough. There are consequences for playing with someone's life like this. He's actually lucky that she came on here and discussed it instead of just buying some smoke-show lingerie and seducing him

This is absolutely disgusting. It’s not often I’m speechless, so well done, I guess.

I can't believe you are so dismissive.
"Not having an involved dad isn't the worst thing in the world".
I can be flippant too if my set my mind to it:
Being raped is not the worst thing of the world. Many raped women all over the world are forced to give birth. Many of the children turn out alright.
Ergo, rape is not that bad.
See ? When it comes to mindnumbing oversimplistic arguments, there is always someone who can stretch it a bit further.
Back to the topic at hand, the reality is that in normal circumstances children are happier when the two parents are involved. There is a wealth of literature that supports that claim.
To deceive a parent about contraception being in place or not is a heinous act because your are willingly bringing someone to the world that will feel resentment from the other half. And just wait for the day they find out that you lied in order to conceive them.

You know, all the virtue-signalling on here is hilarious. This place is full of mums who adore their children. As if you wouldn't quietly toss the contraception if you'd been backed into the kind of terrible choice that OP has.

Yeah, sure, you'd Do the Right Thing and do sperm donation or try desperately to get divorced at 37 and rustle up another life partner before your fertility ran out. And sure, you'd accept a childless life if such unlikely measures didn't work. Pull the other one! 🤭 The drive to have children is one of the strongest drives in human nature. I bet thousands of mothers on MN got pregnant accidentally on purpose. You never had to in the old days, before contraception, because men accepted that babies were part of marriage. After contraception allowed men to endlessly adolesce, women sometimes have to take matters into their own hands.

If partners were honest with each other, none of these situations would ever occur.

I'm not going to dignify your disgusting rape comparisons with an answer.

We are talking about a longtime married couple. He's perfectly welcome to use contraception.

As to what you say about two parents, are you saying that single parents aren't good enough?

How would the child know how they were conceived? If I was in OP's shoes, I'd just tell everyone that my contraception failed, including the dad.

Just to be clear, I would never advocate this under normal circs. I'm talking about desperate times (like OP's situation) calling for desperate measures.

Thank you for being a being a balanced voice of reason on this perspective

False, the partner may pierce a condom with a needle, which by the way, it has happened many times.
Therefore the comparison stands.

@ThisFluentBiscuit Do you know what a terrible choice is?

I had to decide whether to delay life-saving surgery to give me time to freeze my eggs. I decided not to wait, and was told after that a delay of 2 weeks would have been fatal. I was 32 years old. Add to that, I went into full menopause overnight and lost any chance of a biological child.

That is a terrible choice.

And yet somehow I can manage to put aside biological impulses and recognise that tricking someone into having a baby is an immoral act which prioritises the mother’s need to indulge a biological drive over the single most important factor: the right of a child to have two parents that want them.

I sincerely hope you’re wrong because the idea that women are en masse thinking like you is absolutely dreadful.

Oh for gods sake if someone sabotaged a condom it's still not fucking rape. It's wrong, it's immoral, it's deceptive
BUT ITS NOT RAPE

Am loving the faux-outrage! Wake up, this is the way of the world, and you know it! The drive to reproduce is extremely strong, and it's all very well for people who haven't been tricked by a spouse like OP's to judge. He is perfectly welcome to use contraception if he doesn't want a child. I'd be jumping his bones tonight and hoping we got triplets! 😂 It's a baby, not a bomb! Who doesn't love babies? They're a gift and a blessing.

I hope you have the same attitude towards the millions and millions and millions of women who have had an accidentally-on-purpose baby?

I will accept that depending on what contraception method is being employed she could disguise it and everybody would be none the wiser.
However, nowhere in my post have I said that being a single parent is not good enough. I said that children coming from families where both parents are involved are happier.

I'm really really sorry that that happened to you, but it doesn't have much to do with OP's situation. The reason I'm so mad on her behalf is because of the years of deception from her spouse.

To be clear, I wouldn't normally advocate anything of the kind. It's because OP's spouse has run down her fertility with his false promises until it's almost certainly too late to start anew and have a reasonable hope to get children.

True, but if everyone waited for the perfect circs, there'd be way fewer children. In fact, humanity probably would have died out!

Anyway, OP's husband doesn't sound as if he's completely against it, or he'd had got the snip. He might adore the child.

How can you tell, though? If I was in OP's awful situation and had to make a difficult choice, the fact that I'd done it on purpose would have followed me to my grave. Contraception failure, doncha know. Notwithstanding that contraceptives are EXTREMELY effective when used properly.

I think a couple of posters here have strayed into the female equivalent of incel territory.

If incels are men who feel entitled to sex and devotion from women, what do we call women who feel entitled to a baby and fatherhood from men?

It seems like the female manifestation of the incel phenomenon, with similarly repugnant attitudes and abusive behaviour toward the opposite sex.

I'm advocating specifically for OP's happiness and fulfilment in her particular situation. I would never normally advocate this deception. In this particular instance, her spouse has deceived and betrayed her for years and shown zero care for her future. Add to that, it's almost certainly too late to find someone new and be reasonably sure of having a child, given that she's 37 and still married.