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.

Lucky escape then clank

I'm not the mouthpiece of all womankind

Good, stop using the word "we" when talking about women because you can't speak for anyone but yourself.

I guess nobody has been in a situation where they don't agree with someone they love and both of you don't want to argue and hope that over time the other may change their mind. It's difficult. I had friends in this situation but regarding emigrating. They did a bit of avoidance and down playing of the situation despite loving each other loads and having been together over 20 years. Both felt let down by the other but neither was intentionally leading the other on.

The girlfriend is right to bring this to a head, he's clearly in love otherwise he wouldn't have been trying to work out if he could compromise or was wrong in not wanting kids. It's a sad situation.

Just give up at the first hurdle? I TRIED to make it work.

That's a really screwed up way of thinking. You can see that, right?

Your goal was never the same. You misled her into thinking your goal wasn't set yet, so you might go to her goal with her. If you'd comprehensively said, my goal is not the same, I will never want your goal, she would never have got back with you in May. You know that.

I mean... it just doesn't work like that. This wasn't something you should have 'tried' for - you don't want to try, which is fine, having children is a big decision. But she's on a time limit and you knew that, and you weren't really open to trying, so you've been very unfair.

Maybe if you thought about what's happened in different terms you could see that, although you might hurt, you're not the victim here?

it's like, if she needed to go to London and you wanted to go to Birmingham. You told her that and she said, oh I'll go on my own then. A few weeks later you suggest you might go to London instead, so you get back together. You fall apart again. You say you'll really work on going to London, get counselling, etc. You seem open to London. Now you've said you're absolutely going to Birmingham and you've no interest in London, but woe is you, its' so unfair that she won't come to Birmingham too. But Birmingham was never a consideration for her, it wasn't something she promised you or even agreed to consider. She let you know where she stood straight away.

I think you met her 15 minutes ago, so I hope it's going well. Please don't leave it until the end of the meal and remember that she is blameless here and you need to leave your victim hat at home and be a man. You've moved the goalposts, so now you need to firmly put them back and live up to the consequences. If you tell her that this is hurting you too blah-de-blah, she's probably going to have to use all her willpower not to give you a punch. It may well be hurting you, but that's self-inflicted. It doesn't mean it hurts less but it does mean you should expect less sympathy and generally try to deal with it yourself.

Make sure the next woman is very, very clear that you don't want children, and it's not a consideration. Pick someone else with that same clarity.

Chickens

'Please don't leave it until the end of the meal and remember that she is blameless here and you need to leave your victim hat at home and be a man.'

I don't think 'blame' is the right word here, but she was about 35/36 when she got with him and knew she wanted children. He told her it wasn't something he yearned for. This should have been the time, too, for her to ditch him. Even when he pulled the 'open to challenge' stunt that would have been the time to say, 'Okay, then we are TTC from now.'

All water under the bridge now, but you see it on here all the time, woman in her mid-30s with a waffling boyfriend and everyone tells her to ditch him then and there because the fact is, whilst many conceive easily in their late 30s or beyond, a lot of people don't.

I hope she has a nice pudding out of him first before he breaks the news she is off the hook/dodged a bullet

I think if he had shown even a small amount of empathy to her the responses would have been very different.

Instead he has come onto mumsnet wanting people to support him listening to him whine about how his life is over because he doesn't want children but he wants this "girl" for all time, and that life is cruel to him because she wants a child - which he has known for a year, because he loves her.

He doesn't love her, maybe he thinks he does, maybe he is sad about this - but what is really sad is that this lady wants a baby and he gave her a LOT of false hope by the sounds of it.

She then says its over for a third and final time on Sunday and that she wants to discuss this face to face, he possibly has said he will "think" about it (again false hope, and this comes across through the messages) and then offers to take her out on a romantic meal to talk, where he thinks she's expecting him to dump her, when I expect she thinks he will say yes let's try for a baby.

All because he doesn't want his sofa to have sad memories

It is cruel on his part, IMO.

Sums it up Kittens

Good point, Expat. And you're right about blame not being the right word, too - my brain is tired

I was in your girfriends situation. Same age, increasingly desperate for a child, OH while initially "postponing" things came to the decision he didn't want children at all. He was the love of my life.

I left him. So hard all round, but I had to choose, I felt that I was being asked to eat or breathe.

Fast forward some years, I have a lovely OH , beautiful children and happy in my life.

Interestingly that 3 years after I left the guy he had found another woman and had become a father. I was deluded. This wasn't the love of my life at all.

OP I don't think you love this woman as much as you claim to. For some women the need to have a child is searing passion that simply can't be ignored. It is not so trivial as choosing Birmingham or London, the need to be a mother or try to become one can be a fundamental aspect of who they are.

If you can't accept that then you don't really love her.

Pearly, so glad it worked out

Thanks dilys.

pearly I'm glad you now have a lovely OH and are happy.

So glad you had your family, pearly and got away from your string-along dickhead ex.

Thanks expat.

Although we had split up three years earlier it was a smack in the face to find out he had become a father. We spent 10 years together.
For years it was "not yet", "in a few years", "lets get a nice place first" then "I'm not sure I want to" then "no".

Fine. He had the right to change his mind. But not the right to string me along.

Thanks kitten.

Have you ever gone through what i am going through right now?

Give over, everybody has. OP you are a self-centred immature twat. I feel so sorry for the woman you say you love.

pearlylum I hear you. You were lucky. Some of us weren't so lucky ... People talk about "selfish" women putting off having children. No-one talks of the wanker men who string us along. And keep on saying the lurvvvve us.

Pearly glad you are happy and content now

Thanks guys.
I was strong enough thankfully to see the light, and lucky enough to meet a good man who felt privileged ( his words) to be the father of our children.

foggy, I hope you are in a happy place now. X

Foggy exactly! If these men really didn't want children, they would have a vasectomy, then their partners would really know where they stand. Instead, they dither and procrastinate because they want to carry on with their relationship to the detriment of their partners happiness, safe in the knowledge that they can have children whenever they want. And often with the deluded belief that they will still be a catch to a 25 year old when they are 45.

Op you are being very selfish.
You have the next 30 years to make a decision about whether to become a father, your OH has only a handful of years.
Is it any wonder she finds this more of an imperative then you? You don't want to be forced into a decision, but tough, it's make your mind up time.

At least be truthful and let her go if you.
Hopefully she will find someone who is lucky enough to father her children.

I really hope he didn't string her along again this evening!

Fertility in late 30's is such a tricky beast, pearly you hit the nail on the head he has years to make his decision she does not.

I wonder if this poor women has a thread here on mumsnet?
We'd be telling her to LTB.