Wife wants a third child and our life is unbearable

[Abc1237890]

We have two children aged 5 and 2. Our marriage is up and down - I have said for years that there are issues we need to address but my wife refuses to face up to these or to seek counselling. For the past 6 months she has said she wants another baby. I feel like I am done with that period of life now and are delighted with our two brilliant children. I am the main breadwinner and work full time and my wife has started doing flexible work in the past few months to help cover bills. We are by no means financially well off on one salary and live in a 3-bed house so practicality wise it doesn’t make sense to me to have another child.

My wife says that she has always wanted 3 children (this is not something we have properly discussed or agreed on) and now our lives are tainted by this disagreement - she is constantly miserable and lots of arguments, it feels like normal life is on hold and I can’t go on like this any longer.

What on earth should we do?

Before "she" creates another baby????? It takes two, last time I checked! Unless evolution has moved on with the speed of light since I went to sleep last night!!

Is OP actually coming back

🤣🤣🤣 Strong hormones and millions and millions of years of evolution, my dear! Broadly speaking, women hormonally set up to want multiple babies and men are set up to want as much sex as possible. It's the perfect set-up for the species to propagate instead of die out!

Doesn't apply to every individual, of course, but species-wide, this is how it goes!

Baby fever can be extremely strong. That's why it's called a fever. Makes you take leave of your sense and start gibbering rubbish. 🤣

I think number of children should be something that you both need to be on the same page about. It could be a deal-breaker for her so you need to be prepared for her to want to split if you don't agree. It is such a personal thing and honestly once the hormones kick in, they kick in. I would have another one now (I am 52!). My husband was flexible about numbers of children but was very keen to be able to maximise his career (which he has been able to do with my support). Partnership and children is always a compromise. You are reasonable to want to stick at 2 and she is reasonable to want another one!!

First and foremost ensure contraception is in place for both of you. She may well have an “accident “ then what would you do

And did it work?

I know someone who did this, too. Her boyfriend was immensely rich, and she just went ahead and got pregnant "accidentally" while they were dating, not too long after they met. It worked out, though. Now they're married and have three, and they seem happy.

Me too! especially if you’re pregnant. Being pregnant while caring for a toddler is horrible.

You have said no, so no means no.
She needs to get back to work and have more time on her hands for sulking about it.

Wow

Babies are much harder than jobs

If you are certain you don’t want one you can get the snip

Or a vasectomy

There’s something really seductive about babies and some women do get hooked on the baby stage (I absolutely loved it). However you don’t want a third and your marriage isn’t great so the worse thing you can do is to have another one. You’re allowed a vote and to say no, plus financially you’re not in a great place. Children are not a solution to a marriage under stress.

I've known men who were adamant not to have more children with their wives for all the valid reasons OP mentioned...until they fell for someone younger with whom they had multiple children after. The question is whether there's enough love between OP and wife to accept what life brings (after all, not all attempts at having a baby end in pregnancy).

it is not the same. While I agree that it's very dishonest and I could never do it, it doesn't involve a man having to carry a baby and give birth. He can run away to a foreign country and be completely unscathed, or he can refuse to have a single thing to do with the baby except pay the required child support, which often isn't much. A man can totally walk away from a baby and a pregnant woman. But a woman cannot walk away from her situation - she has to deal with it, whether that involves having the baby or going through the potential trauma of having a termination. I agree it's totally wrong for a woman to trick a man into pregnancy, but that way round doesn't even come close to the horror of a man forcing a woman into pregnancy, imo.

She is trying to swerve getting a job.

I’m sorry OP this does not sound good. My DH and his first wife had two children just 11 months apart and they ended up with a son and daughter. My father in law offered her a job as money was tight with two young children. 20 hours a week faxing, photocopying, updating records etc. Ex wife could pick the days she worked and as long as 20 hours were worked over the week how many hours she wanted in a day and mother in law was willing to provide free childcare. DH admits she should have taken more precautions as he knew that like your wife his wife wanted another child. They too were having marital problems and financial issues at the time. When the first two children were two and three years old along came baby number 3. By now the marriage was under even more strain as DH was working 5/6 days a week to keep a roof over their heads. His first wife wanted him home more to help with the children but they were renting a house so had to find the rent and the bills as well as meeting the needs of three small children. His wife’s answer to loneliness was to have baby number 4. They had four children in five years. The marriage that up until then had been strained broke. DH admits it takes two to tango and wishes he had taken more precautions at the time. I would definitely speak to your wife about counselling both separately and together and take all precautions to prevent an “accidental” pregnancy. A baby instead of being a sticking plaster puts more stress on a marriage and so is never something to be considered lightly.

I think all you can do is talk to her and make your position clear, plus take steps to ensure a pregnancy can’t happen. My husband and I had originally hoped to have three children. After years of infertility and much IVF we are incredibly fortunate to have two children and three frozen embryos. My husband still wants us to try again for a third child but I’ve been clear with him that I don’t want to (I’m 42, had two caesareans in less than two years, one of my parents is very ill and I became a SAHP through circumstances not choice and don’t think I would cope well with either three children under four or pregnancy at age 45+, I would also like to return to part-time work sooner rather than later). I’ve taken responsibility by having my fallopian tubes out to remove the (incredibly unlikely in our case) risk of accidental pregnancy and started passing on clothes etc. that we no longer need for our youngest. My husband understands my reasoning, he still thinks it would be OK/ we would manage but he’s accepted my decision so hopefully your wife will too.

It worked in the short term. "A" got him to live with her, she had to go out partying with him to keep him remotely interested but she didn't do drugs or drink she just got to watch him doing so while she got bigger and bigger throughout the pregnancy and desperately tried to stay attractive to him.

Then he walked out when the baby was 5 weeks old. She came to stay with me for a month at that point as she had become suicidal after he left. We (my first husband and I) were living abroad in a lovely beachy area so she stayed for a lovely holiday and went back calm and clear headed.

Unfortunately, once back in the country she continued to chase him, and this became and on and off thing for a couple of years.

She then moved to another country which had always been her dream, he happily signed off on her removing his son from the UK when the boy was about 2 years old. But then the prospect of a shag and a nice long holiday loomed large so followed her out there for a one month holiday and while there he proposed.

Then he went back home and dumped her again over the phone, upon which she chased him back to the UK, removing her son from his nursery, leaving her good job and the Australian weather and lifestyle and moving back in with her mum in a council flat.

It was absolutely horrific to be honest, the whole thing. Just heartbreaking and terrible. I found her on FB a few years ago (I am not on FB anymore), I didn't contact her but I saw she had a new second name, was married with more kids and seemed to be doing ok. I do hope she found happiness because what he put her through and what she put herself through by chasing after him was honestly soul destroying.

The other one, C, managed to pester him into marrying her. He loved to cheat and even came on to me on one occasion. I didn't tell her because at that point she had already told me about him repeatedly cheating and I figured she'd dump me and not him and be even more isolated. Then he hit her, at least once. She got divorced a couple of years later and seems to be ok on her own, though I haven't heard from her in a long time.

Based on these experiences, I would advise anyone who feels they need to trick a man into fatherhood to hang on to him to think again about the sort of man they are trying to entrap. Good men generally don't need to be caught, and good relationships are founded on shared goals and respect.

Yep. I didn't want children, not a bit (that might have changed later I was in my early 20s, although maybe not), but I did accidentally fall pregnant when on the pill and this was followed by a miscarriage, just after I had become accepting of the notion of pregnancy.

At that point, something flipped inside me, the hormones overtook me and ALL I could think about was getting pregnant. Luckily we were married, he was open to that and we went ahead and tried 6 months after the miscarriage. I got pregnant in 5 days.

It's very much, for a lot of woman, an absolutely primal evolutionary craving. It can't be simply overruled by her being logical about it, and that's why the OP should be getting a vasectomy!

And actually, women are hard wired to want sex with different men particularly when trying to get pregnant. Early proto humans wandered around in groups, the reason women aren't obviously fertile like many mammals is so men can't chase away other men when she's fertile, men's sperm actually fights with other sperm too so the strongest sperm survives the competition. Early human females in the groups would have sex with several males to ensure the best, strongest sperm for the baby and so that the men would all offer her protection when pregnant.

Although, as with men, women can always make the choice not to cheat. You should read the book What Women Really Want by Daniel Bergner. It absolutely smashes the old ideas about women's sexuality to bits.

Oh ffs! Where did you pluck that idea from? OP’s wife does work and has small children. How is that not work?
Or do you think that all women who are mothers and work part time are grifters?

Of course, on MN, women who succumb to baby fever, regardless of the circumstances, are generally treated with compassion and understanding. Whereas men who obey the hormones driving them to have lots of sex are disgusting perverts.

I am clearly one of the few women who just don't get it. Never had baby fever.

Did you read any of the post? Cut through the ‘another baby’ stuff and he said:

I have said for years that there are issues we need to address but my wife refuses to face up to these or to seek counselling.

And I suggest that by ‘issues’ he means sex. It’s not ‘way off the mark’. Most of the blokes who post on MN moaning about their crap marriages, that’s what it boils down to.

I can assure you that certainly in my case there were plenty of issues that needed to be resolved with my ex wife and sex was never and issue as I didnt want to have it with her.