Hi I am new here and for the wrong reasons!
I am at my wits end and it's really beginning to affect me to the point where I am crying almost every day over it.
I just turned 33 and my husband of almost 2 years is nearly 36. We have been together for 7 years and known one another for about 15 years. We always spoken openly when we first got together about raising a family and he always said he would like as many kids as possible!
He still maintains he definitely wants children, but my issue is that he keeps changing the goalposts on when! He has backed out on previous agreements and its really upsetting and angering me to the point of feeling like I am going mad.
We both agreed to spend out first year of marriage with just us, having adventures, partying, getting our bucket list items ticked, travelling, e.t.c. and said we would think about kids after our first anniversary. So shortly after our 1st anniversary (May 2016), he then suggested we wait until January 2017 because we had a 3 week motorcycle trip planned for the Autumn anyway. But I always said, from the start, that I would ideally like our first child before I was 34 (which is a year from now).
We are financially and job secure, have a good support network of family and friends. We are currently househunting for a bigger house out of the city and going to rent our current property we are in as there is not much left on the mortgage and we see it as an investment. We have a pretty good deposit saved for our next move as well.
Anyway so I agreed to waiting until January this year, and told him I would come off the pill in October 16 so that it gave my body a few months chance to get regulated normal cycles. So since that we used condoms and him the PO method.
Around Christmas time he THEN said he would rather we wait longer until we have '£x' amount of a deposit saved!! Which really annoyed me that he put a number on when to start trying for our own family!! Admittedly at this point I was going through a tough time with a sudden death in my family and my Mum was about to start more treatment for cancer, so I was under a bit of stress at that point and never really responded to him saying this.
However I brought up the subject at the end of January and AGAIN he changed the time and said to wait until we had moved into a bigger house (before we ALWAYS said it would be ok to have a baby in our current house, as long as we are moved out of it by the time they are nursery age, so thats obviously years away)!!! We have been househunting for 6 months and the market is not that great so thats like saying how long is a piece of string!!! Plus he knows I will be 34 in a years time!
I have calmly explained how my age can be an issue when trying to conceive and that if we want a couple of kids, the risks over age 35 are more, e.t.c. but I dont think he really understands or is concerned?! I understand that he wants to have all our ducks sitting in a row, be settled in our new home, not have the stress of moving and buying a house with a pregnant wife or baby, but people do it and get on with it and survive!!!
I have explained my feelings on the matter and so has he, and it seems we can not reach an agreement or middle ground. It has put me off sex with him and I am beginning to feel resentful of him flipping the script several times.
It was my birthday 2 days ago, I cried in private the whole day because I just felt so sad that we were not on the same page and I feel that he has disrespected our previous agreements on the issue and its looking more and more unlikely that we will have our firstborn by the time I am 34.
Of course I want us BOTH to be ready and want it at the same time, but I cant help how I feel now with this brewing. Time is of the essence and there never really is a 'right' time to have a baby. Whilst I understand where he is coming from - in that he a man and feels he wants to be a good provider, he probably is a bit scared (who isnt?),have a better home for us, e.t.c. - but he is not understanding of my feelings. He also said he wants us to be healthier when trying to conceive (eating better, cutting down on drinking, stopping smoking, e.t.c. ), but I think now this is just him stalling and making up excuses. Obviously if we were trying to conceive I would take care of my body better and healthier.
All of my friends already have children or are pregnant and it adds to the hurt when they keep asking about when we are going to try, e.t.c. I cant bring myself to tell them how I am feeling.
I get what people have suggested in their comments on other sites, that we should wait for them to come around, e.t.c. but I also agree with the people saying that it's unfair for the man to have full control of the decision!
I do not feel I am being unreasonable at all, he has changed his mind three times now and led me to believe we were going to go down a certain path, only to stop and change it! And there is nothing I can really do about it!
He really is a wonderful man, he is a very good husband, lover and my best friend, good job, supportive (except for this issue lol), sensible with money, e..t.c. the list is long and until lately we have still been in the honeymoon phase, very affectionate with one another and not liking being apart for too long. However now I find it difficult with being in his company because of how I feel. There is no way I waiting until we move house because that could take up to or over a year at this rate!
Anyway, after thinking a lot over the past few days and reading comments on other sites, I am going to request that we seek counselling over it. I don't know what else to do and can not control my feelings. At the end of the day it has left me feeling unhappy, we can not resolve the issue over talking, so I feel we need to try this route to come to some sort of mutual ground. It's driving a wedge and I can not go on feeling like this every single day.
Does anyone have any advice or stories similar to this? What happened?
Thank you for reading xx