Would you sacrifice it all?

[modernday]

I have been with my boyfriend for about 5 years, and we are both early 30s and I know it's cliché but we really clicked from the first day.

However, our careers are very different. He's in the armed forces (spends 80% of the year at his base tho) and I work a regular office job. Ever since we met he's been very clear about the strong possibility of not wanting children/marriage. Whilst this is not something I absolutely dream about, I do sometimes envision myself getting married and/or having children but have also thought of sacrificing it for the right person (if he happens to be so long term).

Have any of you been in this situation? Did you actually sacrifice your wants and needs for the person you consider to be your other half? Was it worth it?

@modernday

Okay sorry I should have explained myself better. We both live in the city his base is at so by saying he's 80% of the time working at the base I was trying to say that he rarely goes away.

He could be posted to another base which may or not be in the U.K.

He is asking you to sacrifice a lot and he is sacrificing nothing. He would walk away at a moments notice, get married and have children in his 40s.

If I was married to someone I really loved and then we discovered he couldn't have children, I'd have stayed, but I wouldn't have stayed with someone who just didn't want them. That's putting his desires massively above your own. He needs to find someone who thinks the same way and so do you.

The fact that you yourself consider it a "sacrifice" is very telling. If it wasn't something you considered valuable you wouldn't refer to it in such a way. If you genuinely feel you wont want marriage or children, you wouldn't care and wouldn't be "sacrificing" anything at all.

Therefore, reading between the lines, you know that its highly likely you want these things in life and you are trying to convince yourself and asking us to help that these things aren't needed if you have love. A couple of points you should think about:

1. Why does he get to make these life decisions for you as a couple? Why does he get to say what is and is not part of the life plan?
2. Just because you decide in 10 years time that you want children does not mean you will be able to have them. There is a myriad of reasons that could prevent you from having kids just because you reach a decision about it
3. Many couples choose not to (or cannot have,) children and live perfectly happy, fulfilled lives.
4. You need only dig through MN and various other SM platforms to see the way that forces marriages commonly go. Spoiler alert, majority of them do not end well. Bare that in mind when making important long-term life decisions.
5. I was a forces wife, I ask you to strongly think on Point 4.

1. Why does he get to make these life decisions for you as a couple? Why does he get to say what is and is not part of the life plan?

He doesn't and didn't. He simply said how he feels. No one is forcing OP into the relationship he's been open and its her choice.

It's not easy to know what you'll want in a few years. You may want marriage and children you may not.

As others have said you don't need him if what you're after is sex and someone to spend time with. You can have lots of friends, you can have lots of sex and as you can have sex then probably children if that's what you want. The question I'd be asking is do I want him. You may want marriage/children in a few years time? You could get run over by a bus tomorrow, who knows.

If you're not sure what you want try to figure that out. Meanwhile if you're in a good relationship make the most of it as most of the people on MN are in pretty crappy relationships and give advice accordingly.

Be careful OP, you may feel that it's not a huge issue now, but if your biological clock starts clanging, it can suddenly become an overwhelming issue over night.

I wouldn't sacrifice it all, no. Your man should be interested in your happiness. He seems more focussed on his own.

Well it's not a binary choice between being married with kids and having a successful career. Many of us manage to do both!

This. Both me and my ex husband managed to have successful careers AND marriage and kids. Not every woman who has kids becomes a SAHM (not that there is anything wrong with this of course) and I have continued my career. Good job really as he had an affair and I would have been in deep shit otherwise.

I don't live with my partner, I don't want to get married again, to him or anyone else and we don't want kids together. But we have both been there and done that so we both feel happy in our choices. If someone was telling me this when I was at your stage in life, it would have been a no thanks as your options are automatically taken away from you.

Early 30's doesn't give you loads of time to waste deciding if you want children or not. You may not find it that easy when/if you do decide it's what you want and fertility drops significantly with age. Or you and/or whoever you may want children with may have problems, which could take a while to get to the bottom of and then you may need to think about getting help. I have heard of people who think they have all the time in the world then when they decide the time is right they discover it's not that easy and wish they'd thought about it earlier because actually the time is never 'right'.

I think if you definitely didn't want children you'd know by now.

Here’s an experiment for you OP if you ever return, but I’ll share it anyway for others in a similar position:

Imagine your boyfriend called you up tonight and said ‘I love you. I want to have your babies. I want to spend my life with you and be legally a family. Will you marry me?’

How would you feel?

Delighted I bet. You’re trying to convince yourself you don’t want marriage and children from the sounds of it because it enables you to stay with him and avoid the uncomfortable painful reality that by choosing to be with him you’re choosing to slam the door on parenthood or marrying.

I’m another who finds it really odd that you’re in your thirties, undecided, may want kids ‘eventually’ but are ‘in no rush’. Say you’re 33, your fertility begins to irreversibly decline in two years. That’s 24 eggs you’re going to release between now and then (if you’re not on hormonal contraception). And then it will get harder to conceive. Not impossible, but harder. And you’re not even in a relationship yet with someone who wants and is ready for kids.

The time to decide this was a while back, however it’s absolutely your choice and by remaining with him you’re deciding that kids and marriage aren’t what you want. Which is completely and utterly fine, plenty feel the same, and it’s not for anyone else to judge.

“I think if you definitely didn't want children you'd know by now.”

I think it’s the opposite tbh, personally. Remaining child free is the default, we all start out that way. Actively deciding you want children is a step you take. I think if OP wanted kids, truly WANTED them, not just a ‘meh, it might be nice’, she’d know by now. The fact she’s in her thirties and still undecided and in no rush suggests to me that she doesn’t want them but feels like she ought to want them, trying to convince herself perhaps...

Bloody hell.

There are loads and loads of us who conceived in their late thirties with no problems at all.

Also, HE'S WITH HER 80% OF THE TIME! 80 PER CENT!

When you are with someone who is away 80% of the time you are forever in that honeymoon phase and just don't really get to know the other person day to day. It really colours how you feel and what you want for the future. If you don't marry you will never be together as a couple as the services only allow married couples a married quarter house. At least it did way back So basically no marriage or civil partnership, your life continues as it does now. Forever.

*Bloody hell.

There are loads and loads of us who conceived in their late thirties with no problems at all.*

Of course there are, but it's true that leaving it into your late 30's to even decide if you want kids is taking risks with it happening for you at all. I know plenty of women who have started their families in their late 30's because of not meeting the right person, etc and that has meant that they could only have one. That was out of their control but it isn't in the OP's case.

@dontsaveusername

When you are with someone who is away 80% of the time you are forever in that honeymoon phase and just don't really get to know the other person day to day. It really colours how you feel and what you want for the future. If you don't marry you will never be together as a couple as the services only allow married couples a married quarter house. At least it did way back So basically no marriage or civil partnership, your life continues as it does now. Forever.

OP already said she’s with him 80% of the time :)

@Notashandyta

Bloody hell.

There are loads and loads of us who conceived in their late thirties with no problems at all.

Also, HE'S WITH HER 80% OF THE TIME! 80 PER CENT!

That’s great! Female fertility begins to decline mid thirties however. Nobody is claiming it’s impossible to conceive later on. But if you’re in your thirties in a relationship where kids aren’t an option and in no rush it’s fair to acknowledge that an awful lot of things would have to happen before getting a baby, which all take time. Ending this, getting over it, finding someone new, not rushing it, ttc which can take time and not be successful right away or without help or even at all...

It’s like Rachael counting backwards at her birthday. It’s naive to pretend women can just kick the baby can down the road indefinitely without consequence.

Having said all of that, OP is choosing currently to prioritise this guy over kids, which is her prerogative.

Can I also add that if at the start he said he may not want marriage/children have you asked him recently 5 years on?

You're starting to rethink, maybe he is also.

I think for me the issue here would be the steadfast nature of his statement. I do believe that in a long term decent relationship there are times where you both sacrifice things for each other to larger or lesser extents.

The key there is that you both do. Its fine that you may be prepared to sacrifice it in the future for him but his unwillingness to accept any idea of sacrifice of his original life plan would be a problem for me.

Its the outright no , expecting traceability on one side rather than both that for me means he wouldn't be an ideal partner.

Most relationships have some element of give and take. The worrying ones are where , particularly on the big decisions , the give is only expected on one side. That expectation in itself would be a problem for me.

Ultimately OP only you can really answer this but for me I choose to go through life with my DP partly because we operate as team , when we face decisions we face them with both perspectives and needs equal and look to find a compromise (a lot easier to type it than it actually is of course )

That particular dynamic is very important me. If I was following someone else's path , whether it suited me to , because they refused to even look at other options that lack of consideration for the other person makes it no longer a partnership. I'd be out.

I know someone who sacrificed having children to stay in a marriage with a man who didn’t want them.

They’re still together and rub along okay but I know she bitterly regrets missing her chance to be a mother. I feel desperately sad for her.

It’s so finite. Sure, splitting up with someone you love will hurt, but you can fall in love with someone else. Once your chance to have children is gone, it’s gone forever.

To answer your question: no. I would never sacrifice that for a man. Especially not for one who wasn’t even in the country for most of the time.

I was 34 and left my first husband for the exact same reason. I will never ever regret it, two children later and a wonderful second husband, I could not have left that part of me at the table.
I've got so many things wrong in life but that...that was absolutely correct.

No.

No.

No.

Never do this.

Every situation I've known along these lines (two in real life, countless threads on here and 'friend of a friend' scenarios: the man has eventually left for a younger woman when he hits 45 ish, sees he's the only one still partying/spending his weekends playing sports/ the only one not involved in dad's junior footy etc, so he fucks off the now-too-old-to-have-kids partner or wife, drafts in the younger model and they have their baybeeees.

It's a big risk even staying with a man like this who doesn't want kids, as he can stall and stall if he likes... until you run out of time.

The trouble is - actually very few men definitely DON'T want kids EVER EVER. That would be fine.

It's that most men want it all (don't we all!) - they actually like the idea of being a dad and having a family and it's all cosy footie in the park etc. But - they don't want it now when it will get in the way of beer and lad's nights and their career. It's always at some unspecified time way in the future, when they've squeezed out just a few more years of pre-kids fun. Plenty of men still feel like this at 37-40, and that's bad news for the women they've coupled up with while both in their late 20s.

If you've got a situation like this, and the man is more dominant and the woman passive... she will stay too long, run out of time, and then when Mr In Charge changes his mind - she gets dumped.

Do not do this - you will quite likely end up with nothing except regrets.

Lay it on the line now and if he isn't on board - leave.

I do have a close friend who 'sacrificed' having kids of her own for her relationship, but she had been single a long time and met her partner when she was in her late 30's. He was mid 40's, separated with 2 children and knew he didn't want any more. She always wanted kids but knew realistically that if she ended her relationship with this man to pursue children with someone else, she most likely had missed the boat anyway. It took her almost 40 years to meet her someone and that is way too much of a risk to let than go for a small 'what if' chance. She is now very happy and plays a large part in his children's lives.

If she had met him when she was in her early 30's and he'd said the same thing, she would have held out hope for meeting someone who wanted the same as her, I'm sure, but age does play a part in weighing up that compromise.

@Notashandyta

Bloody hell.

There are loads and loads of us who conceived in their late thirties with no problems at all.

Also, HE'S WITH HER 80% OF THE TIME! 80 PER CENT!

Yes but having them late 30s isn't the issue!!

It's the waiting until you've been strung along until 36, realising that you're running out of time and THEN making the leap and having a window of 4-5 years to meet the right person, spend a couple of years getting to know them at least, then starting the family.

The biggest and hardest part of all this is actually the fact that it's the decisions you make at 32-33 which are the crunch ones - before you're even near the end of your fertility window (hopefully). Do you risk staying at 33 with the man who says 'oh one day'? He may mean it and you'll start trying at 36-37. He may be stringing you along but you won't know until it's probably too late to rescue your situation and find someone else and have long enough with them before you start ttc to know they're solid.

I remember reading somewhere some pretty eye opening piece on women who engineer 'accidental' pregnancies. Almost all of them were in this situation and while it's a terrible thing to do, I could completely see their dilemma.

How old are you both?
You say he's said he doesn't want to get married or have children because he wants to focus on his career but what does that actually mean? That he doesn't want to be 'distracted' from his military life? That he doesn't want to cause pain etc if he should die in combat?
I think you need to understand his reasons first.
He should also consider that his career will not (most likely) span his entire lifetime. What about when he retires? Does he not want children, grandchildren etc or a life partner/wife to share that with?
What happens if he has to leave military life early? A friend of mine was medically discharged early due to developing a medical condition that prohibits him being part of the military. Not his choice or fault but he has had to leave in his 30s when he'd planned on being in it till retirement.
What is the difference, to him, between a wife & girlfriend?
You need to have a proper conversation with him about this before you can decide whether life with him is worth it for you.

And I think there are also a hell of a lot of women who have been with their partner long enough to know that actually, he will want children one day but if it's left to his ideal timetable, she'll be into the danger zone and may miss her chance while he's oblivious. And so she deliberately gets pregnant, and it all works out and both of them are genuinely happy. I reckon quite a few folk I know are in this category.

It's too big a sacrifice to make. Its likely you will regret not having children in the future and resent him for it.

It’s just too huge a gamble for me @YoniAndGuy. I was with my ex from 25-28 and when we got together we’d both said we wanted kids late thirties. At 28 I was ready and he realised he wasn’t and had no idea if or when he would be... maybe late thirties.

Obviously we split up, there was zero way I was going to watch my fertility drain away while with a man who was holding me back from the children I wanted, on the slim chance that in a decade we’d a) be together b) he’d magically be desperate for kids and c) I’d be fertile enough still to have them. Too big a risk.

So we split. Dated with the intent to find a good father for my children as well as good partner and found one pretty fast. Pregnant by our third anniversary. Didn’t rush it but didn’t hang about forever either, I knew what I wanted going in and so did he, and if he didn’t want the same we wouldn’t have got together.

Women can’t afford to gamble if it’s something really important to them.

I don't even know if I want to get married or have children because I am fully focused in my career too at the moment so I haven't quite decided but I haven't ruled out the possibility.

You need to sort this bit out first.

If you end this relationship and move on is it going to be on the basis of you may or not want to marry and may or may not want to have children? If you're looking to end the relationship to start a new one with someone to raise a family then you've answered your own question, you do want children and need to face up to that. Having faced that question you can then speak to him honestly and say you actually want the marriage and children and if he's not on the same page its time to go.