Tell Me About Your Close Calls ...

[NotQuiteCockney]

Long before DH, I had a serious DP (we lived together, saw ourselves as married, and talked about having kids). Since having children, I've realised that having kids with him would have been a complete unmitigated disaster. This man had power struggles with his cat! How on earth would he cope with a toddler?!?

Anyone else think back to exes, imagine having kids with them, and quake in fear?

God i quake in fear at the fact that i desperately wanted a SECOND baby with my ex before he cheated on me a second time and left me for her.

I wish ds was my dp's child

before I left south Africa I was going out with a guy who I thought was the one. anyway he obviously wasn't and I am now with dh. heard recently that he'd thrown his wife and 6 year old son out because he "didn't want to have a domestic life". lucky escape me thinks

Madamez I'm not prejudiced either but I'm with mp on the transexuals not making good life partners to their wives. I personally have no issue with anyone's sexual preferences, however I have a friend whose husband told her on the verge of them adopting a child that he wanted to change gender and who then told her a year after that that he wanted to start seeing men, and three years on she is still trying to put her life back together. I'm sure he was a lovely man and is now a lovely woman, but the hurt he caused those around him is irreparable. I guess my friend could be posting on here about her close call then ey.

MadameZ - my ex is a lovely person, but she would be the first to agree with me that she would have made a rubbish life partner and father - whether she had stayed as a man or not.

Wannabe, Rosa and MP: not wanting in any way to be disrespectful of your experiences, what I'm saying is that there's a difference between being a good life-partner and being a good parent. Which is not dependent on gender or sexual orientation.

yeah but Madames, if you have a child with a person who you think is the life partner for you and then they realise that they are gay it does not help for a harmonious partnership and break ups between parents for whatever reason are not what any of us would choose when we plan our children. It doesn't mean gay straight or whatever they are good or bad parents.

Surely MP doesn't need to be accused of prejudice by being relieved that she didn't procreate with a person who later decided that they could not live happily in partnership with her because she was the wrong gender.

Shimmy: the point is that people may well decide to have a child together and then break up (because one partner is violent, or a drug addict, or a career criminal, or just doesn't want to remain in a partner relationship with the other person) but that being gay/transgendered doesn't automatically make a person less of a potential good co-parent than being a non-transgendered heterosexual. As is thoroughly, repeatedly demonstrated on MN and elsewhere, being heterosexual doesn't offer any kind of guarantee that a person will be either a good parent or a good life partner, so why judge a person's parenting potential on their sexual preferences?

all you say is true, Madamez, but the point I'm making (and MP??) is that most of us would not choose to have a child in a relationship that is destined for heartbreak (and it must be heartbreaking if the person you love and have a child with decides they don't feel the same about you).
Now if you had a child with a gay co-parent knowing they were gay when you started or being gay and having a child with a straight co-parent is completely different.

We're talking about close calls here - i.e. nearly ending up with someone who is not right for you. Surely if you're gay it would be just the same if you nearly made a life comittment to someone who later decided they were actually straight. A recipe for a lot of tears.

Shimmy: fair point, sort of. And I may have misjudged MP but had the impression she was saying that gay/trangendered people were by definition not suitable parents, and that it's a bad thing to have one parent who is gay or transgendered. When the relationship one has with an XP is not the same thing or judged on the same terms as the relationship one has with a co parent.

The point you make is very valid MadameZ, but from my point of view it would have deeply affected my parenting of my children if my co-parent was not also my partner. While I appreciate that many people parent in this way and have no choice but to do so and make a splendid job of it, for me, having kids with somebody who, by definition was not going to be able to co-parent with me in the way I would have initially envisaged, would have been very distressing and therefore by definition, not having children with this person was a lucky escape. Although I wouldn't necessarily have said that when he dumped me for another woman and I cried my eyes out for six months and moped inconsolably for two years.

i think you have completely misjudged MP, madamez. truly and utterly. that is not what i read her as saying at all.

nah madamez. even if Mp thunk like that - which by virtue of her mumsnet persona to date - i would doubt - i certainly know she aint as thick as shit - so she wouldnt be with the open gay parent bashing on a pinko liberal hippy middleclass site like mumsnet.

go in peace my little jelly fish and regard the world in a yellow foamy cloud called emyphoniaville

Whatever you're currently on, iamnotcustyhonest, I don't want any of it - ever.

Can I have some though - am just jealous that my ex's just turned out to be tossers have nothing as dramatic as a sex change to post about!!

i've had such a sheltered life, no one I've slept with has become anything more interesting at all really.

my close call was a very very posh boy called Sebastian who adored me in a very OTT romantic manner and he'd planned our elopment (gretna etc etc.. he used to play rachmaninov and read victorian novels to me).

Thankfully I came to my senses in that way you do when you're 19, at university unsupervised and suddenly faced with lots more choice.

Cannot imagine how he'd have coped with real life at all, and he is even now a bachelor with fabulous home in tuscany writing Important Novels and Meaningful Sonnets. yak. (was vvvvv wealthy tho which could have been nice for a bit)

Madamez: "And I may have misjudged MP but had the impression she was saying that gay/trangendered people were by definition not suitable parents"

No really I AM SURE THEY CAN BE LOVELY PARENTS

But I REALLY always wanted to raise children with a man with a penis or with a man who wants me to have one

I know this is TERRIBLY conservative of me and many people may chose alternate life partners and that is GREAT for them

But speaking PERSONALLY, when my ex-husband decided that she was really a woman called Claire, my first thought was "Thank the lord we didn't procreate!"

Just PERSONALLY, for ME, that would have made things rather stressful, and therefore I am very happy to have settled down instead with a man who has a penis and likes sleeping with women

Just PERSONALLY

Both Lovely Tranny Hubby and Big Gay Boyfriend would I'm sure make fabulous parents, but thankfully not with me, and therefore they are my Close Calls

Is that clear enough now

But I REALLY always wanted to raise children with a man with a penis or with a man who wants me to have one

Oh no I got it wrong

with a man who

well I'm sure you get the idea

Morning paper - I get you!

I was engaged to a guy who didn't want kids. I can't imagine not having any. I was only 2 months away from marrying him.