As PPs have said: the answer isn’t to “accidentally” skip a pill and hope for the best. It’s to sit down and have an adult conversation about whether you would like children and when relatively early on (I mean, it’s a timing thing, which can be tricky - I don’t meant slapping your ageing ovaries down on the table in Zizzi on the first date, obviously).
But if a man runs for the hills when you broach such a subject at 6 months in, and you’re at that stage in your early/mid 30s or later, that would ring an alarm bell for me to be honest. Many men need to grow up and wake up to the reality of the finite nature of women’s fertility.
Couldn’t agree more.
Actually I’d go further and say if you’re in your late twenties and beyond, it’s better to have the discussion very early with a new partner and to make sure you’re on the same page re WHEN to try as well. Doesn’t always guarantee anything, with my ex I said when we got together at 26 I wanted to try in two years and he agreed he did too, when that time came he changed his mind, and we broke up as he couldn’t say when or if he’d be ready.
I met my OH shortly after and actually brought it up on the second date when discussing past relationships. Obviously not in an ‘I want a baby, with you, now’ way. In a: ‘yeah, my ex and I broke up because I want to start a family within the next couple of years. that’s still my plan, so if that’s not something you’d like in your life that’s cool but we’ll have to just be friends instead of continue dating’. He’s four years younger than me and was a student at the time so I assumed he’d be uninterested. Frankly if that had scared a guy off I’d be thrilled as I would want a guy who didn’t want what I want to be scared off ASAP so I’m not wasting my time on a relationship that’ll be a nice fun few years and end with me even older and less fertile.
It’s so drilled into us as women not to scare a man off, to be coy and shy about our goals, don’t mention marriage or he’ll be scared off, same with kids. But as women we are the ones with a biological clock and if you genuinely want children and you’re approaching your thirties you just cannot afford to be meek and mild about it. If a guy had told ME on our first few dates he wanted a family soon I’d be thrilled so I realised I was being stupid absorbing that mentality that a guy would be freaked out just because he’s male.
It’s very freeing to just be honest about what you want and let someone make the decision to come along for the ride or not. As it stands our relationship for the first year was very fun and we really enjoyed properly getting to know one another and falling in love and having so much fun before moving in, but we also once a year had passed started to talk more seriously about timing and set ourself goals. We sat down and looked at our career trajectories and decided on a date to TTC and that we’d like to own a property before a child is born and how much we’d need to save per month tracking backwards to achieve that, and then we got on with it.
We’ve been together 2.5 years now and we’re actively TTC, about to complete on our first house and I just cannot tell you how stress free and easy and wonderful it’s been to be with a man who actively wants a family compared to the string of guys I dated for 2-4 years at a time in my teens and twenties who I would get in a relationship with because I fancied and then loved them, but then realised a couple years in the fatal flaw in having incompatible goals. Not that I wanted kids before my late twenties, but still.