Leaving over marriage and kids

[Ijjstdontknow]

Hi, I was wondering if anyone could weigh in with some advice on my situation. I’m not sure if I need to give my head a wobble or not.

Current situation is me and DP are both 25 and have been together coming up to 3 years. Have lived together for two. Have discussed marriage and kids before and agreed it’s something we would both like, DP pretty insistent he wants to get married before having kids.

My predicament is this: I have stage 4 endometriosis for which I have been waiting a full excision for almost 18 months. This has obviously been delayed massively due to COVID. Because of the intensity of my Endo, even though they have removed a lot of it once I have a lot of scar tissue. I know that this will make it harder for me to conceive. This means I would like to have kids sooner rather than later, DP knows this and it’s something we have discussed in detail before.

I fully thought we were on the same page until last night when we were discussing our friends who recently got married. I made a jokey comment about when were we getting married and he replied “when we can afford it” I was a bit ? So questioned this and then he said hopefully it’s doable in the next few years.

I’m really upset about this and I don’t know what to do. If we don’t think about marriage until the next few years and then kids after that it will be considerably harder for me to have them. I also have a chronic condition that would not make me the ideal candidate for IVF, and it also means that the older I get it will probably be harder for my body to physically carry a baby.

I know we are very young but I just feel like my internal clock is screaming at me and I don’t know what to do. We are tied into a tenancy agreement that has 6 months left and before we looked for somewhere else this was a conversation I was going to have with him because if we signed on for another 12 months I would be nearly 27 coming out of that and I’d definitely want to know we’d be making some progression by then.

I obviously know that I can’t make him do what I want and if I did that would be a recipe for disaster. But I also need to do what’s best for myself. If I left him and didn’t meet someone and couldn’t have kids at least that would be my own choice. I don’t want to end up resenting him. I don’t know if I should wait until our tenancy end date is nearer and have a serious conversation with him (and see what happens in the mean time) or just tell him we’re clearly not on the same page and rip the plaster off now.

For context we both have secure stable jobs, his more so as it is government in a position where they are crying out for more staff. Combined we have about 7k in cash savings and a similar amount in ISAs. We could save more if we wanted to but we just send over a set amount to savings every month. We have no debts and both drive. We currently live in a city (not London) but pay premium rent. When this tenancy ends we were discussing moving out of the city and into a house where our rent would drop a considerable amount meaning we could put more into ISAs to buy.

@Ijjstdontknow

I mean, there’s no way I would have agreed to have a child at 25, under any circumstances, because that would have wrecked my life.

I don’t want a child at aged 25. I have never said that. My issue is he’s said he wanted to get married before having children which I’ve agreed to and I thought that that would come soon ish (as in we’d talk about planning it next year). But last nights comment said we’d be getting married in a few years and then kids after it, after everything we’ve talked about. That’s the issue.

If he's been with you 3 years @Ijjstdontknow then he knows you well enough and knows now whether you're the woman he wants to spend the rest of his life with or not. Unless he's planning to do.it imminently (and it seems not if he's talking about years), then it's very telling he hasn't proposed yet , especially as if he wanted kids with you, he'd be getting a move on himself, knowing you have fertility issues.

Unfortunately in this case, he may be using waiting for marriage as stalling tactic if he doesn't want to have kids with you. This is why it's SO important NOT to skip marriage in order to have kids earlier. He needs to be 100% committed to you now before kids, for this to stand a chance and is what's best for your child too to decrease the chance of a broken home down the line

Hope your chat with DP went ok!

Just wanted to add, men are really thick when it comes to fertility. They think everything is easy peasy. It could be a wake up call for you to bring him along to meet your consultant. Maybe a doctor’s words will hit home. Your doctor can explain your condition, the reality of IVF (that it’s expensive, time consuming and never a certainty) and all those other things. It might sound harsh but your DP probably thinks you’re being dramatic about the whole ticking clock thing.

I think you two need an honest, in depth conversation about the whole situation. Conversations like these are important, but you need to be level headed and prepared.

You need to think about yourself and what you want, and he needs to understand that a timescale must be set.

I think if you are wanting to speed up the process of commitment due to your health and desire for children OP, you could consider some pre-marriage couples counselling. It would put you in a better place going forward.

You are both young, and young enough for him to have doubts about whether he has finished living his youthful life, doubts as to whether you want to marry him or just marry in order to have children, and children are a huge life changing commitment that shape the rest of your life.
You may be putting having children ahead of your relationship, and that can have consequences down the line. When you go through a rough patch in the future, he may begin to feel resentful- that he was pressured by ultimatums or forced into a corner. And you might feel less sure of him once you have children - and see him in a different light, and your relationship might change.

You won't have the foundation of married life without children, and you may have different expectations that only emerge once you are parents.

Some counselling might help address both his doubts and both of your needs and expectations and put you in a better place to decide.
Good luck OP.