I love her but she wants a child badly and I dont

[user1462882883]

Hi everyone,

I am new here and a male ( bear with me!). I have read this board for a while and wanted to post my story to share and would appreciate your views, especially anyone who can relate to it.

I am in a relationship with an amazing woman who i truly love, and who loves me. We want to be together forever. We have been together for just over a year with one or two splits.

Early on she said she had always wanted children in the near future, and I told her that children have never really been something i have yearned for. We were falling in love and this issue fell to the wayside - for a bit. Then it resurfaced and she hadn't changed her mind at all, it was non-negotiable for her. So i told her i would open my mind to the idea of becoming a father more as i loved her.

Fast forward to now, and she has given me an ultimatum that either i get on board now while she can still have children ( she is 37), or she will look elsewhere or have one on her own. So effectively she is choosing a hypothetical child over her love for me.

I have been to counselling, to explore why i am not paternal, and no matter what i do or try, i just cannot generate a want or a desire for a child of my own, even though i love this woman. It is so heartbreaking to lose her over this, i dont want to lose her. I will never meet another so perfect for me in all other ways.

I just cant seem to get that longing or want for a baby / child. People say once its my own, then it would kick in, but surely you have to have some sort of want on some level to do this?

Please advise as i cannot cope with the thought of losing this woman.

Is this the first relationship you have had where the conversation of children has come up? Or in previous relationships have you been open from the start that you don't want children?

To the women on here who do not want a child, would any of you ever think of having a baby because the man you are in love with, and who loves you, wants a baby?

No fucking way would I make such a life changing - and it is life changing rather then the "18 years" you're mentioning - to please someone because I'm not an absolute idiot! You shouldn't either. It's way too risky and it doesn't just affect you if you don't have a change of heart once children are here. Go and find a woman who doesn't want children, seriously. I always knew I didn't want them, had no maternal feelings (had an active desire to remain child-free), and at 48 this has not changed. I actually think thank god I never had them! BTW Mr Snow, I'm not lonely because I don't have kids. I have a lovely quiet life where I can do what I like when I like. Wonderful!

I really hope she sees this.

You wish you'd never met the woman you say is your love .

I met my husband when I was 26 and knew that he was the one for me after about 3 months. I was pregnant within a year and a half of meeting him. I was much younger then too so I am pretty sure by your late 30s you know if you love someone pretty quickly. I don't think she is using you she loves you and wants to know if you will have children with her. If you don't she might as well walk away now no matter how much she loves you as she wants children and doesn't have time to waste.

If you don't want children tell her so you can both move on. Don't tell her you need more time as she doesn't have that time.

You've had a courtship. You've had a year. At 40 you should know yourself and what you want in a partner.

She was honest from the start.

She won't be upset to finish it, she'll be angry and disappointed that the man she saw as her future and the potential Dad of your family, has wasted her time and let her down.

You are refusing to try for a baby, yet stringing her along and thereby stopping her doing so with someone else. You are denying her the intrinsic desire as a woman, to have her own family.

You need to let her go today.

Explore your issues with your bad parenting anyway as these need dealing with.

Please, let her go, before she ends up hating you and running out of time. You knew deep down from the get go you didn't want kids and she has wasted a year of her precious declining fertility while you explore your issues, to no avail.

There's nothing noble in this, quite the opposite. It is cruel what you are doing. She has no closure and now no baby and no prospects of one for possibly years, if at all. The risks of pregnancy, childbirth and child health all increase at 40. This is her last chance.

It is cruel to draw this out any further.

You must tell her today, without further delay.

my friend all say the same as all of you have - to let her go hard as it is, let her be.

rumbling - you have hit the nail on the head there. i wanted some women from this thread to also tell me how any woman who is 36 and wanting a child so badly , " fast tracks " a man into a baby if he wants a courtship first and then a child.

you write very well and your points are clear. I think what i struggle with the most in the whole thing is. no matter how hard i have tried with my girlfriend and the counselling - i still cant get on her page despite her pleading me to.

I would resent it eventually, if we had a child and i get sidelined. child always comes first and at first i may be ok with the loss of freedom and all the other things, but once the relentlessness of it all reaches a certain level, i know i will collapse.

I cant deal with the hurt of separating when i have done nothing wrong and neither has she. I cant deal with starting over with someone again, and what if that goes wrong too.

You have all been great and i will see her tonight. i was going to phone but this will be a final goodbye and i am bricking it.

i wish id never met her, so i wouldnt have the pain afterwards of losing this person

i cant do it :(

i am utterly heartbroken.

I will end it tonight.

i "s this the first relationship you have had where the conversation of children has come up "

Yes this is the first time i have been blindsided by this issue. this is the first woman who i truly would settle down with. My past relationships have not ended due to the children thing, but due to the love dying away.

You have to deal with separating.

It's the right thing to do.

Life's unfair sometimes.

You're already projecting that your next relationship won't work out. You have no idea what's up ahead, none of us do.

There's no such thing as 'fast tracking.' It still takes the time to get pregnant then 9 months to have a baby.

Many people start trying for a family in their first year together - because they started out on the same page, or it has happened and they get on with it.

At 40, with a woman's fertility clock running down, you don't have the luxury of years of courtship and running about all over the world AND a family. Life choices are more limited. You have to be pragmatic about this.

You seem to see life in total absolutes, black and white, all or nothing, straight to catastrophe, pessimist terms. You don't want kids with this woman but you're writing off any new future with a childless partner.

What exactly do you want? Apart from everyone else's needs to come behind your own?

I already answered that question. I'm 36, want children very much, met someone 'on the same page' but who wanted a courtship first, we've had a wonderful year together. He knows that I want to start trying within the next year, there are discussions still to be had about when exactly, but because he is on the same page I know that we're heading in the same direction.

If he didn't want children at all, or spent time bitching about how worried he was that I would change or that I wasn't going to devote my every waking thought to him anymore I'd have left. I'd be sad because I think we have a lot going for us and I love him, but I'd accept that we want different things and move on.

If he turns round to me tomorrow and says he wants to wait another year before even trying, I'd leave. I've been honest and clear from the start.

What exactly do you want to hear? What can anyone say 20 pages later?

I was 36, dating, and while not exactly 'desperate' to have a baby, but yes, I hoped to have a family. So yes, I would have dumped you.

That's what I can't understand. A year down the line and you guys still don't know what you want - or one of you hasn't been clear about what you want...I don't feel YOU have been honest with her.

With all due respect OP, you are one of the biggest drama llamas I have ever seen on MN. And that's saying a lot.

Do this woman a favour when you break it off. Don't go on about how you tried to do the noble thing, about how she's the love of your life, about how this issue 'blindsided' you, about how utterly heartbroken you are, because you'll just make her feel even more like shit. She will already be feeling like she's wasted a year on you.

And I can't help wondering why the fuck you posted on MN where most posters are women, and mothers, rather than ChildlessMensnet (I'm sure there's something like that out there) where you might find more perspective.

Having said all that, rumbling well done you, for 'writing well and making your points clear'. I wonder if you'll be quoted in the Fail in the next few days.

Look - you are blaming everyone except yourself for your situation. She was clear with you from the start that she wanted children. You have never wanted them and probably never will, you (irresponsibly) gave a bit of considerations to whether/how you could cope with a child just so you could keep her and then inevitably backed out.

It isn't fate, it isn't that she won't concede to 'courtship', it isn't that you met her. What is making this stress and drama in your life is very clearly your beliefs, your inability to function adequately in a relationship, your fear of responsibility but most of all a number of choices you have made.

EVERY WOMAN wants a family.

Are there ANY women out there who want to be child free?

Yes maybe when she first raised this in March of last year and tried to finish it then, yes maybe i should have had the strength to walk away and accept it may not work out.

But i fell in love and am paying the price

Offred I am in awe of your patience.

Offred I am in awe of your patience.

Of course there are women who don't want children

Stop with the drama, stop wailing and blaming the universe. Move on and move forward.

EVERY WOMAN wants a family.

No, they don't. There are posters on this thread who don't, or didn't you see them?

She raised it in March 2015? What on earth did you tell her to make her stay?

EVERY WOMAN wants a family.

Are there ANY women out there who want to be child free?

Are you from the 1950s? I know of at least 4 married couples who are happily child free.

Perhaps you due to arrested development like maternal women to fall in love with and therein lies the issue...

Oh well, I give up now.

It is clear that you are so hideously self involved that you completely lack the ability to take in information.

Grow up... Really... Everything that needs to be said can be contained in that phrase.

Oh how I have tried to be patient.

It is clear you want to be at the mercy of 'cruel' women who won't support what you want but who you desperately need to function... And if the women you encounter in the future are sensible you will end up alone with your misery, insecurity and protective sexist views.

No-one can make you function as an adult but please at least try not to harm other people as you make your way through life...

Ha! X post

It is clear you want to be at the mercy of 'cruel' women who won't support what you want but who you desperately need to function... And if the women you encounter in the future are sensible you will end up alone with your misery, insecurity and protective sexist views.

No-one can make you function as an adult but please at least try not to harm other people as you make your way through life...

Bloody hell this is so true. For my ex too. Are you sure you aren't him?

Sweet lord! OP, you're either ridiculously dim and stubborn or you're actually just having a laugh with us now. 'Every woman' ???? We don't all get cracked out of the same plastic mould you know, any more than men do. And several posters, including me, have said that we have decided not to have children. You don't seem to be listening to a word anyone is saying.

Listen to this woman - she wants a baby and has no time left to piss about. You cannot change her mind. Finish things with her NOW, in a calm and civil way, and then stay far away from her forever more. Come back here when it's all finished for good and you might find people a bit more sympathetic