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Original poster

Don't want kids but wife does - is divorce the only solution?

312 replies

justthisguy31 · 29/09/2013 20:34

I'm a bloke, aged 31, married to a clever, beautiful, successful woman who loves me, but I'm starting to think we should get a divorce. She seems firmly set on having a baby, and the idea of parenthood scares me stupid. I know how much hard work it is, as the oldest of a big family, and I still have so many other things to do in my life that will be hard or impossible with a child.

We have had the argument, several times, and then talked about it for real, and finally agreed a compromise. If she still wants a baby when I turn 38 (she is 6 months younger btw), we'll do our best to have one. That gives me time to build a better career and save some money, and both of us some years together as a couple, to have fun before we have to live just for someone else.

Are we just kicking the can down the road though?

I wasted time in my 20s on bad ideas and dead end jobs, and it took me until last year to find a career that would fly. Now I'm doing something I really enjoy, that pays well (for entry level) and has great prospects, but I'm still on the bottom rung. My wife, on the other hand, already finished her PhD three years ago and started a very promising, but very intense academic career. Which is to say that if we had a baby now, the only option that would make financial sense is for me to chuck in my job and be a stay-at-home dad. Not exactly what I want to do with the rest of my life.

I'm also biased by my own parents' financial problems. My mum gave up work when I was born, and while my dad has had a pretty good career overall, when I was 10 he hit a rough patch and got into debt. It took the rest of my childhood for them to get back on a stable footing, and they still don't have the comfortable lifestyle they did when I was young. I remember endless fights, totally futile because there's no way to argue bills or petrol prices down, and I can't shake the fear that we'd end up in the same sort of hole. Even worse, as the lower earner (and likely primary child-carer) I'd be in my mum's position. Trapped.

Then from my wife's point of view, 38 or 39 is old for a first child. If it turns out she can't have a normal pregnancy and a healthy kid at that age, it will be my fault for insisting on the wait. Maybe a pregnancy will work out fine, or maybe she'll change her mind about wanting a kid, but if it doesn't happen there won't be any way back. I don't want to risk trapping her.

So I'm starting to think I have to let her go now, while she still has time to find a guy who wants children ASAP. Still not sure though if it would be self-sacrifice, or just selfish. I am sure she'd miss me, and I'd miss her.

I've typed this up more to organise my thoughts than to start an argument, but if you see flaws in my thinking please say so. Tis a forum after all :-)

OP posts:
YouHaveAGoodPoint · 30/09/2013 11:11

MuswellHillDad

Your post is simplistic...

... but spot on Grin

MILLYMOLLYMANDYMAX · 30/09/2013 11:20

I do not think it matters as to what you discussed before you got married, when that tick tock body clock starts everything that was discussed before goes out of the window.

A friend years ago was crying because her husband had said he did not want anymore children (he had 1 child with 1st wife). At the time they married she had said she was not bothered about children, she had her career and was quite happy. Having a child did not figure in her plans but then her body clock kicked in. Her husband said he would leave her if she got pregnant, she loved him but she was desperate for a child.
My advice was to get pregnant anyway. I put it to her that if he was going to leave her if she got pregnant then the chances are the marriage would not survive anyway and a few years down the line she would be on her own without husband and with no child and even if the marriage survived she would grow to hate and resent him for putting her in that position. If she did get pregnant after the initial shock he would either leave or come round to the idea, he was a good dad to his child by his 1st wife.
9 months later they celebrated the birth of a beautiful baby girl and they are still happily married to this day.

I think you are over thinking the situation. The only question you have to ask yourself is do you want children? It is a yes or no answer. If the answer is yes then get on with it, regardless of what you think there is never a perfect time to have a baby. If the answer is no then let your wife go so she has time to meet someone who does want children with her

Branleuse · 30/09/2013 11:28

tell her that you probably wont ever want to have children and are really unlikely to change your mind. Thats the truth and is better than half arsed semi compromises, that is not really what either of you want.

Josie1974 · 30/09/2013 11:40

IMO, have couple counselling before you split.
Your reasons for not wanting dc sound like they're so heavily based on your own childhood and not what the reality may be for you.

Eg you could say you would only have dc if you stayed working?
You don't have to have a stay at home parent, you could both carry on working.

Thumbwitch · 30/09/2013 13:06

I think you should give your wife the choice.

Tell her your gameplan, tell her that you refuse to be flexible about it. Tell her that you don't want to hold her back and that you don't want to get to the point where she is 38 and then has troubles conceiving and resents you for making her wait so long.

Tell her, or show her, what you have written in this thread and then let her make her mind up. If she chooses to leave you, so be it.

My DH is 9y younger than me. We have been together now for 10y, but we had to have the baby chat quite early on because we didn't meet until I was 36. DH had thought he would like to wait until he was 35 before he had children; I pointed out that I would be 44 by then and it was likely that I wouldn't be able to have them if we waited that long (he wanted 2).
I gave him the choice - to either compromise on the age he had arbitrarily set for having children, or I'd let him go and find someone younger, for whom that age wouldn't be an issue.

He chose to stay with me, but we did try to get me pregnant before we got married (as I couldn't have borne the guilt, really, if I was infertile). As it turned out, I was VERY lucky to have DS1 at 40 and even luckier to have DS2 at 45, with 3 MCs in between.

Of course I would have hated it if he had chosen to go off and find a younger model, that would have been devastating; but I was ambivalent about having children myself and he wanted them, so I had to let him choose.

You should do the same.

pantsonbackwards · 30/09/2013 13:12

Thumbwitch. How had he not done that maths?!

Val007 · 30/09/2013 13:49

I wasted time in my 20s on bad ideas...

I wasted time in my 30s on amassing a fortune

I wasted time in my 40s on grieving for my ex wife and our unborn children

I wasted time in my 50s on feeling sorry for myself for always being a decade 'late'...

I think I will start living now. Enough of planning the future based on the past. ;)

Thumbwitch · 30/09/2013 13:57

Pantson, it wasn't so much his maths that was at fault, more his biology! His aunt had had his cousin when she was ~45, so I think he thought that was normal?! (He wasn't very well versed in fertility issues, he'd never really had to think about them before)

FetchezLaVache · 30/09/2013 13:58

Wow, Val. Standing ovation for that post!

SolidGoldBrass · 30/09/2013 15:50

What actually irritates me about threads like this is the amount of pressure people like to put on those who don't want children to change their minds. Choosing to be childfree does not make you wicked, immature, or selfish - the planet is overpopulated and the number of people having three or more children more than makes up for that percentage who don't (or can't) have any. If you are the sort of buckethead who thinks it's fine to nag at the childfree about how life is 'incomplete' without breeding and that it's OK to force parenthood on a reluctant partner, just think for a minute about the misery you might be contributing to. People who really, really don't want children but are worn down until they have one or more often make lousy parents, and that's no fun for the children.

JessicaBeatriceFletcher · 30/09/2013 15:54

SGB - very well said.

ImpOfDarkness · 30/09/2013 16:13

I think that's unfair actually. Most people have been saying OK fair enough if you don't want kids but making your wife hang on until she's 38 on the offchance you might change your mind is not on.

MrsDeVere · 30/09/2013 16:19

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

JessicaBeatriceFletcher · 30/09/2013 16:36

Imp - yes, most people have been reasonable although some have jumped on the OP, unnecessarily, I think, as if he was the devil incarnate). And perhaps this thread hasn't been as bad as others but you do occasionally see comments that imply - or sometimes come out and say it - that anyone who doesn't want kids is either deluding themselves and will change their mind; or is selfish; or lacks responsibility; or doesn't really love their partner because if they did they would 'give in'. There was a comment upthread where someone recommended their friend 'oops' their husband who was dithering about children! Fortunately the husband was OK and turned out to be a great parent but he may well not have been and that would have been totally unfair on the child.

PTFO · 30/09/2013 16:44

Oh I can hearing the whining in your post. oh poor me my lovely wife who loves me wants a family with me, BUT I want....

Yeah yeah she changed her mind, you know what women do. We cant help it blame mother nature. Forget the finances and the blah de blah, take that all away.

option1 on your own with work.
option2 work, wife family.

make that choice now and put it into place. Don't string your wife on for years, don't have it hanging over you both because your wife will resent you, you need to kill the hope.

either way man up.

pantsonbackwards · 30/09/2013 16:56

Thumbwitch. Oh i see!

AnyFucker · 30/09/2013 17:04

That's all well and good, SGB. If you are honest with your partner and don't string them along to this mythical point in the future where they might change their mind. One of the cruellest things a man can do to a woman is coerce her into wasting her childbearing years on the promise of something he never intended to fulfil.

Xollob · 30/09/2013 17:50

PTFO Shock What whining? I think you may be projecting. I hear a man whose wife has changed her mind and is trying to do the decent thing.

Lifeisforlivingkatie · 30/09/2013 18:34

That's a tough situation, it's all lovely saying leave and meet someone else, the reality of these plenty others can be elusive, sometimes it's best to compromise for a better good.tell your wife you won't be staying at home to raise te baby, she sounds like she can manage with or without you at home.best of luck

Jux · 30/09/2013 19:22

Have you discussed what you might do when she is 38 and you're no further ahead in your career, or you've had to change career again and not earning much but have good prospects, so long as you put the time and energy in for a year or two? Or if you have found that you really, seriously don't want children, so badly don't want them that you really cannot under any circumstances have them?

PacificDogwood · 30/09/2013 20:12

Well, I hear a man who is deeply insecure and to be perfectly honest sounds like he wants out of a relationship which is threatening to become all grown up.
I take on issue whatsoever with people who have no desire to have children (was there not a man upthread who said he did not and never wanted to have them? Fairenuff), but to me justthisguy sounds young for his years and quite confused what's scaring him.
I agree with everybody that your own childhood issues are clouding your judgement wrt to your own relationship and potential family.

Stay with your wife or split up, but I think some form of talking therapy would really help you.

PacificDogwood · 30/09/2013 20:14

Val, v good Smile.

SGB, I think the OP got quite some varied replies and a lot of "Ok, you don't want children, but your propsed compromise is rubbish" which I think is fair comment.

TheFabulousIdiot · 30/09/2013 20:29

Pretty sure the op hasn't mentioned the population problem in any of his posts and JESUS, I hate it when people say 'I think you're projecting'. It's the kind of thing people say on those threads where someone is trying to prove that men get given different advice to women when posting on mumsnet. Like women just aren't allowed to have an opinion on anything because they are just projecting.

Xollob · 30/09/2013 21:05

Eh? Hmm

Highlander · 30/09/2013 21:46

Yes, separate.

I never wanted children but was fankly bullied into it by DH. Despite promises if him doing his share, I have been left with all of the responsibility and drudgery.

You'll hear all the stories if how fulfilling children are, but that's not always the case. Granted, you have to take a huge risk before you find out.

I love my children, but my life is miserable. I had a great, full life pre-kids and now I feel imprisoned.

You're not immature if you're not ready for children yet. But you are being very unfair to make your wife wait until a time that her fertility could reach rock-bottom. IVF might just be a wank into a pot for you, but it's a procedure that carries a lot of risks for a woman, as well as numerous vaginal-based procedures/tests etc. Pretty undignified.

Let her go. There's no shame in parting if you reach a deal breacker.