I'm not asking for help because I know that no help can be given. But after years of struggling with the children/no children thing, and heartbreak over relationships that failed, and one deeply felt miscarriage, I've found that I still haven't found any peace and equanimity.
Worse, I've found my confusion actually deepen as I've gotten older.
I had a long stint of singledom in my late 30s and early 40s. I was quite depressed during this period. I found it difficult to be an ageing, childless single woman. I felt judged. I felt lonely. I contemplated having a child alone but in the end I decided that it wasn't my top priority. I didn't want to go it alone. I'm in a fairly insecure profession and I worried about how I would provide for it. And Sarah Jessica Parker's line from Sex and the City about "If I'd really wanted a baby, wouldn't I have found a way to have one by now?" resonated with me. I decided that having a meaningful romantic relationship was my top priority and while I, ideally, wanted a child too, I didn't dare raise my expectations that far. And as a 40-something, going dating - internet dating of course at my age - I didn't want to be that cliche: the spermhunter. The He'll Do woman. That's what I'd done in my last relationship. That really had been a bad idea. So I said I "maybe" wanted children. As in I hoped, but I didn't assume.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, I started a relationship with a man who'd said he didn't want children on his profile. On our whatever date, we discussed it. I said I wanted to leave the door open. He said okay. We were both desperate to have sex with each other....
It was a quite magical time. I fell very deeply for him. There was none of that 40-something last chance saloon about it. I felt 25 again. I'd never expected to fall so completely for someone at my age. It felt like more than I could have hoped for. And yet....I wanted more. A year later, I asked him if he'd ever consider us having a child, and he said, yes. I felt overwhelmed.
But it turned out he didn't. It was a blip, he said. A mistake. He's never really wanted children - though he'd contemplated it with an ex - but now it was too late. He'd been very clear, he said. Why on earth did I enter into a relationship with him, a man who didn't want children? Why did you enter a relationship with me, I said, a woman who said "maybe"?
We saw a professional. And it came down to this: I could respect his views. Or we could split up. I felt better because I realised I had a choice. I could choose to leave, or I could choose to stay. I chose to stay.
But it hasn't been the end of it. We fight. We are opposites. We don't handle confrontation well. He's a very loving, sincere, loyal man who I find very attractive. He's clever and successful in his career and we share similar interests. But, we are also opposites. He is very highly strung, organised, disciplined. We're both over emotional.
And I feel a sense of loss....
It's become worse as I get older, partly I think because I fear getting older. And I see how much meaning my parents have had had from their children, and how meaningful I find my adult relationship with them. And I prematurely regret that I won't have that. I've never yearned for a baby per se; but I do mourn the not-having-a-family-of-my-own, particularly when I project ahead to later years. He doesn't understand. If I say such things, he feels under attack. And then I feel like well, it's okay for him, we're doing things his way....
He never contemplated the if-it'll-make-you-happy approach to not-quite-convinced fatherhood. Which I understand and respect...and yet still. It hurts.
So, like I say, I know there are no answers. But I obsessively read other people's accounts: regret at having children, regret at not having children.
He believes that the issue of children - and my ongoing feelings of loss and what he perceives of as resentment toward him - is the root cause of many of our issues. And I feel....misunderstood. I feel like the rows and arguments and flying-off-the-handles break the compact we made when we agreed to settle the children issue: that we would have to be each other's family; that we'd need to be everything to one another. He ended our relationship a year and a half ago in the middle of a fight. Since then, we've both raised question marks, threatened its existence. I feel insecure.
I find this lack of stability totally disorientating and disheartening. And it makes me think I made a mistake about choosing him over having a child. He thinks that I am holding him responsible for decisions I have made.
What is certainly true is that I've made a right royal mess of my life in many respects. I can't believe I'm 44. That I'm in another unstable relationship punctuated by rows and unhappiness. That I've completely fucked up the having-children thing. I dithered over so many things for years. In the absence of making difficult decisions, I made no decisions and drifted for years.....
I console myself with the Sarah Jessica Parker line and call up the ambivalence I've felt about having children - when I remember my childhood I remember very vividly my mother's exhaustion and my father's bad temper and happy holidays and a feeling of claustrophobia. And then, I leaf through friends' and acquaintances' Facebook photos: the women who do seem to have it all. Good jobs and cute children and a husband who seems to delight in them and who was willing to help support them.
I don't have that. And I wouldn't want to give a child any less than that. And it's madness to hold it against my partner. And yet....the way that he's been so singleminded about what he wants and so unconcerned about what I want, and my happiness is a hard pill to swallow.
He's wondering the same, I know: he's told me. As you can see I'm writing this down to try and help me gain perspective....but I would love any thoughts or insights that you think you might be able to bring to bear. I know that it's my fault, by the way. I don't "blame" him. Or do I? Have I deliberately constructed this whole complex scenario to create a scapegoat for my own feelings of ambivalence and indecision about having children? Or is it true...that one is most likely to regret the things you didn't do, rather than the things you did?
Sometimes, I agree with him. I think I am to old. (Not to conceive, I know that, or at least assume; I've always assumed I'd have to have some sort of assistance or foster/adopt). But to be just sending them off to university at the age of 65....(particularly given the aforementioned insecure career).
Ugh. Help!