Hi, thanks for reading my post, any help would be greatly appreciated as I am going through a bit of hell right now and I need to vent and get some other opinions. I figured mumsnet would be a good place to get some advice from a community I wouldn't normally be a part of.
So, please bear with me, this is quite a story.
So, I have been with my wife for 16/17 years, only married for 4, but dated ever since we were teenagers. We are very much in love, I love her so very much, our friends and family were so happy to see us get married, that when we kissed, the entire church erupted in cheers. No things aren't perfect, but no more imperfect than any other relationship and better than most in my opinion.
BUT
In the lead up to our wedding, maybe a week or so before, she tells me she is worried she won't be able to give me a family, I figure it is just cold feet right? We have spoken about kids for years, I made it VERY VERY clear how I felt, I wanted a family, it has always been in my mind. She knew this, so her coming up with that on the eve of our wedding looked like cold feet.
So we got married, it was great, then on the honeymoon, she decided to tell me that she doesn't think she wants kids. I was blown away. Here we are having the time of our life, and she drops that bombshell. We just blew a lot of money getting married, we had everything going for us, and boom, she drops the big news.
But, she has always told me she was on board with it, and she was in her 20s and neither of us was particularly mature, so I said that we aren't wanting kids RIGHT NOW, and she seems to have changed her mind out of the blue. So I kept calm, I love this woman, I decided, let's go see a counselor, get some therapy both as couples and separately. Let's get some books and get educated. She told me she didn't want to get pregnant and do the whole child birth thing. So I figured, let's educate ourselves, put a pin in this and talk about it in the future. But for now, let's get educated on it first.
Fast forward 2 years, she comes to me and says that she really doesnt think she can have a baby. The pregnancy and birthing does not appeal to her, and seems terrifying and painful. But here is the kicker right now, she has decided FOR BOTH OF US that she is NOT having children biologically. I will address this more later, but she believes it is her body and she decides what happens to it, and she pretty much informed me she was not going to allow her body to get pregnant.
It really kicked off a bit here, I went a bit mad. Because she kept saying 'I know you would make an amazing dad, but I just can't do it'. We had a huge argument (which we have only ever had maybe 3 in the entire time we knew each other). I said I needed some time to think so I left the house, and I called her mother and let her know we had a bust up and that she may want to check in on her daughter (as they live close by). I was also going through some serious depression and was having some suicidal thoughts before she told me this, so I wasnt in the best place to hear this.
So her mum got involved a little bit here as she tried to support her daughter. I was a bit damn surprised by this in a way because she has had 3 kids of her own, and my wife's siblings have both had 1 or two kids themselves. Their family revolves around kids, so when my mother in law tried to tell me that I was being silly and that I didn't really know what I was talking about wanting kids, I was somewhat infuriated at the hypocrisy. This is exacerbated by the fact that until that very phone call, my wife has avoided telling anybody in her family that she felt this way about kids as each time the subject came up they all told her she would change her mind and asked when she was going to have her first kid. So my mother in law going the full 180 caught me off guard and it is hard to argue with somebody who is being a total hypocrite.
But we spoke afterwards and I said to my wife I don't care about biology. I asked if it was just the birth and pregnancy she couldn't do and whether she would be ok with adopting. She said yes, she could be open to that but that she wasn't totally onboard with it, but removing the pregnancy from the table really helped her process it and changed her views a lot.
So we put a pin in it again, I felt like this was progress. 6 months down the line she said one evening when we were on the sofa, that she really appreciated my being open to adoption and that she is kind of coming round. I saw this as a great sign.
Then give it another 6 months to a year, which brings us to last week. Now I just got a new job, this is not related, other than to say we have more money than we have ever had, and after my professional life being in the drain for 7 years, things are looking very promising for me. And I think maybe this new money and future prospects will assuage her fears about the financial side of kids. But she totally blindsided me, because last week, out of the blue she told me she wants to get sterilized. I was a bit stunned so I can't remember the reason, but essentially she wants to stop taking birth control pills, and even with the pills she doesn't enjoy sex at all as all she can think about is the danger of getting pregnant.
This has seriously messed with my mind. The last time we spoke she was on the fence about kids, but she has now gone full hard reverse and gone as deep as possible into the no child territory. And though I have not looked into this much, I am pretty sure that being voluntarily sterilized with no medical reason is a massive red flag if you try to adopt later on. So not only is this a hard no to getting pregnant, it is also putting adoption at real risk too.
But then she landed the master stroke of this statement. I asked her how she feels about adoption now, and she said she would do it, but only because I wanted to. AS IF ADOPTING A KID WAS LIKE BUYING A CAT. This scared me to death because with that one statement she admitted that she doesn't want kids in any capacity, but also that she would be willing to adopt a kid (lets ignore the issue of the difficulties of adopting for the moment) just to make me happy. That is so very irresponsible and just wrong.
She once again decided to get sterilized on her own, she was not asking my permission, merely asking what I thought about it, though the way she worded it she was clearly doing it out of courtesy, not because she feels I should have a say in it.
(Let's address this before it goes any further. I will fight to defend anybody's right to say what is done with their own body. Even though i want kids, if my wife got accidentally pregnant, I would not even think of stopping her getting an abortion if that was her wish, because it was not planned and it is her body. But in a marriage, certain things affect both parties. In deciding not to get pregnant, she has made that decision for me too, without consulting or even asking me really. The same goes with getting sterilized. I am not saying I should have to give her my permission to do things with her own body, but when it affects me too, I should at least be considered. I wouldn't get a vasectomy without asking her, I wouldn't get a massive face tattoo without asking her, because it affects her too)
I was totally shocked by this. She has basically told me that she has now made her mind up and is willing to permanently make steps to stop getting pregnant. Not only this, she has in my opinion quite possibly sabotaged the idea of adopting too, and I can't help but think this was deliberate.
What really confused me though, is that after she said this to me, we had an awkward evening. The days afterwards she has been being overly affectionate, as if nothing happened, and then she seemed to be randomly snappy and sarcastic at other times. I have been walking around in a daze like I have shellshock. I can hardly feel anything right now. And I don't care about anything because I have been in fight or flight mode since we had the talk. I have no idea what is going to happen, I alternate between not eating, and stress eating compulsively.
I tend to put other people before me, it is just something I do. In the case of my relationship I usually let my wife get her way with most things as my goal was to make her happy. I was not a pushover by any means, but I tried my best to make her happy. This entire time with this issue I have tried to be understanding, I spent a long time questioning if I could live without kids. But the moment she made this decision for us, and took having kids off the table, it just made me realize how much I do want them.
I have two nephews and two nieces, whom I love very much. I tried to pretend I could be happy with just them, but I only have to look at my two brothers in law with their kids to know I won’t be. Those kids love me, I am very good with them, but to them I am just their uncle, they love me but they don’t seem me but once a year. So we don’t get much time together. And every time I see how those kids are with their dads, I ask ‘why can’t I have that?’ and I wonder what is so bad about that that my wife will go so far as to get sterilized to prevent it.
My wife believes I have accepted her decision about sterilization, I have not. But I do not believe it to be in my power to forbid her anything. And in truth I don’t care about the sterilization itself, more so that I care what it means. It means she has made her mind up, she is no longer saying she doesn't ‘think’ she wants kids, she may as well have signed a contract saying she does not want, will not want children and is willing to permanently remove tha from the realm of possibility.
And in giving me her response of an absolute no, she essentially gave me an ultimatum. I didn’t respond properly to her question because I believe once we pull the pin on that discussion, there will be no controlling its momentum, and I want to know how I feel when I broach this subject.
I understand how she feels, at least I think I am. I try to understand her logic, kids are expensive, messy, they disrupt your life and in truth if you had to sign a document stating what you were getting vs what you would have to forfeit, it makes no sense. But on the other hand I just feel strongly that I want to be a parent. I want to teach my kids how to be adults, and show them the world. I never had a good relationship with my dad, but my grandad raised me in all the ways that matter, and I have always wanted to be looked at the same way I looked at him, the same way my nephews look at their dads. I think I would be a great dad (admittedly many do).
So even though my instinct is to give my wife her own way, it would be the easiest thing in the world to just go along with not having kids. I feel like I would resent it more and more each day.
This is not to mention that she lied to me too. When she told me on the honeymoon that she changed her mind, I thought it was a recent development, as if something had scared her. But when she brought it up last week, she said she always knew from a young age she didn’t want to be a mother.
So whether she lied to me out of fear of losing me (I think this is most likely) or she lied to trick me, the end result is the same. We shouldn’t be in this situation, I feel tricked, like this woman who I hold above all else, and I KNOW she has never lied to me about anything else, just happened to keep this secret which rocks the foundations of our entire relationship.
I WANT to say this is not fair, this is all your fault and just leave and try to find somebody else. But I LOVE my wife, faults and all. And I WANT her to be the mother of my children.
I want to rage, but I just feel sad. I feel like there is no right answer. If I stay I will be sad and resentful. If I go I will lose my wife and best friend of 17 years.
I caused none of this, she caused this whole thing by not being honest. And it almost seems as if she doesn’t understand what is at stake. She has not behaved very well about this whole issue and yet I am the one struggling with so much guilt. I don’t want to lose her, but I don’t believe it is right of her to ask me to give up on wanting my own family either.
I just don’t know what to do. I mean I don’t want to hurt her, but in a very real way she has hurt me deeply, and I am going to be hurt no matter what I do. I am almost 35, time is running out if I am to meet anybody else, but at the same time, I don’t want anybody.
Sorry I know this is a meandering mess of a story. But it is representative of my mind right now. I am glad I am not suffering from depression and the suicidal ideation anymore, that would make it even harder to think.
If you read this far, thanks for your time.
Have any of you been through something like this? Did you choose to leave or stay? Do you regret your choice?
I would love to hear your thoughts, because I am just ruminating on this like crazy. My therapist would be really angry at me for thinking about this so much. I am just going round in circles.