I've ruined my life by having a family

[Thirtylifecrisis]

Just as the title says really.

I have 2 DC and a dp. Love my DC sooo frigging much.

Before settling down I had my own small house (2 up, 2 down) and a professional job.
I dated like a hobby and waltzed around seeing friends, going on lots of holidays and daydreaming.
If a relationship went south I had no issues in ending them, deleting them and moving on. As I was on my own all through my twenties I had friends of all ages for adventures. A close friend in her sixties to go to Rome with. Other women in their twenties to go bar hoping with. Colleagues in their forties to go wine tasting with
Life was full of options and opportunities. If things didn't work out I could always book a holiday, change jobs, migrate abroad, join the circus or whatever. So much freedom.

I spent a decade living like this.
I always wanted a family. I wanted to meet a steady and stable man who was financially solvent with no children so we could marry, combine assets and have children with.

I met DP during my dating sprees. He sold me a dream that wasn't quite reality. He was steady and stable but not financially solvent. He hid debt from me and I didn't know until he moved in. Sex life was and is horrendous! Erectile dysfunction.
He then lost his job and I was about to kick him out but lockdown struck. Fucking lockdown. Sent me a bit crazy tbh. My dad died during lockdown. I nurses him for 4 weeks whilst he died from pancreatic cancer slowly Infront of me. Trauma.

DP was excellent during this time. Really a rock. Suddenly the finances didn't matter.
We were in this bubble together. Living together with no one else. It was like life would always remain like this in lockdown. With the absence of real life and just me and him, all flaws in the real world became irrelevant to our temporary lives. His debts didn't impact. We weren't exactly going anywhere. He got a new job and paid his share of bills. The fact we had nothing in common didn't matter either. For that time we had everything in common. All we had was eachother and netflix.

I then became pregnant. A baby to add to our bubble.
Then lockdown properly ended and the real world resumed. But it was different. We emerged from lockdown with me heavily pregnant and with a man I actually had little in common with and would never have chosen as a life partner.

Then everything happened so quickly. I bought us a bigger house for our new family. We had our baby.
DP got an IVA for his debts. We got a dog. I came off maternity leave and got pregnant again (whilst DP tried out Viagra). We were then juggling decorating a new house with 2 babies and a dog.

I am not the passenger in my own life but my god. It's like I just woke up one day with a partner, 2 kids and a dog. It feels like this happened in a blink of an eye, before I could even think through wtf I was doing. I feel like I've been asleep for the past 5 years and living on auto pilot.

DP has been a fantastic father. He really has. He is in his own words 'living the dream'. This is all he's ever wanted. He's 50/50 in child rearing and the mental load. He probably does more housework than me if I'm honest. He does the weekly food shop with the toddler in tow every week. He spends his weekends taking the toddler swimming, mowing the lawn, running errands and cooking family roast dinners. He brings me a coffee in bed Saturday mornings whilst I have a lie in with the baby and then heads off with the toddler for the morning of swimming, shopping errands. He'll then come back for us to do something as a family. He'll have the kids whilst I go out with friends no questions asked.

But we have nothing in common. Literally nothing. We don't laugh. We don't cuddle. We don't have sex. We have different sense of humour. There is little there.
Our commonality is shared family values but that's as far as it goes.

We did couples counselling when I was pregnancy with number 2 as I was unhappy with our relationship. It didn't do anything. There is no spark.

Now I feel trapped and I'm suffocating. We have two little ones. The baby is 6 months old. They are as attached to their dad as they are to me.

I adore them. I really do. But this is not the life I had envisaged for when I have a family. I spent my twenties having fun and really building a solid foundation to NOT be in this position when I eventually settled.

I am living a life I did not want or plan. Anything I do now is not the life I've wanted. It's the opposite.

I did not want to be a single parent but I knew life could happen. That's why I wanted a man also financially solvent. So if this shit hits the fan no one is dependent on the other and the kids would be provided for. If I end it with DP he's homeless. Nowhere to go. He has an IVA and countless other shit.
I then face a life of financial hardship as I'd have to pay for the house and kids and DP maintenance would be minimal due to his financial issues. So I'd have 18 years of juggling the books and raising 2 kids.

If I stay then I have decades of shit sex with someone I have literally nothing in common with.

If it weren't for lockdown this relationship would have ended. He'd have been a brief relationship from the past id barely remembered. I'd have continued to waltz around in my mini cooper visiting friends, holidaying in the sunny destinations and having hot dates with various men.

Now I'm looking at a lifetime of single parenthood or settling for an unsatisfactory relationship.

I can't waltz off this time. I have two tiny people who depend on me to make the right choices for them. But what is it?

This was very long winded but so cathartic to write. So thank you for anyone who's read this.

OP I haven't RTFT but I have read all your updates. Some thoughts:

Having children and losing a parent are both major life changing events. I've recently lost a parent to cancer too and I know how traumatic it is. They say not to make any big decisions for a year after you've experienced a major loss, and for a year after you've had a child.

Most people change as they age. I was single through most of my 20s and 30s and lived overseas. It's easy to look back with rose tinted glasses, I too was very care free, travelled and went out with friends a lot. But I also dated a couple of abusive arseholes and for periods I was very lonely. Even despite that, it's easy to look back with envy at my old self. Now I'm in my 40s and although I don't have kids, my life is still very different. I have a house, a partner, a steady job and I also recently spent time caring for a terminal parent. I'm just not the same person anymore, I don't really want to live my life at 60mph these days. Sometimes I do feel sad that I'm no longer so care free, fun and spontaneous but I also think that's a normal part of aging.

So my advice would be maybe go to solo therapy and spend some time figuring out who you really are now and what you really want. Obviously accepting that now you have DC, you will need to put their needs first. Maybe this is less about your DP though and more about all the changes you've been through and needing to reconnect with yourself.

One more thing - several of my friends are now in their 40s and childless, not because they wanted to be but because either they didn't find a man they wanted to have kids with, or they did but Mr right let them down. If you'd cast your DP back as you seem to wish you had, you might have experienced the same. Womens fertility is not infinite and it gets harder to find a good partner as you get older, the pool gets smaller and smaller.

There is no perfect partner and there is no perfect life. Most of us don't have everything and have had to either make compromises or have them made for us somewhere along the line.

This song comes to mind...Check out Everything Must Change by Howard McCrary on Amazon Music
music.amazon.co.uk/albums/B0BGST5QRC?trackAsin=B0BGSTP7YZ&do=play&ts=1722697265&ref=dm_sh_Mb6KuKK0cK0UO0amG0MZYet3H

Why did you get a dog?

OP I think you have some really good advice here - didn't want to read and run as a few of my best friends and myself had a life similar to what you described in our 20s / early 30s and I also lost a parent very recently. I absolutely adore my husband and DC but sometimes find myself fantasising about my old life of travelling somewhere every weekend, splashing my salary on personal luxuries, having multiple dates lined up during the week, going abroad to work if I ever got too bored etc etc etc. I also found it hard to settle down on being a mum and wife as I did all of those later than average and got a bit too comfortable in single life. These are passing moments of idealisation when my mind is in autopilot and sleep deprived with a new born. In those moments little do I remember, for example, how anxious I was from constant partying and noncommittal relationships. It did take me some therapy and plenty of self reflection to finally admit that part of my lifestyle back then was due to my own commitment issues. I remember how grateful I was when I noticed I was capable of falling in love with a stable man. To your point each relationship evolves into something with its own unique problems - almost all couples will evolve from shagging like rabbits to "boring parents to young kids". As an example I felt incapable of anything to do with sex for months after our first born and our bedroom was a very unsexy environment where poo color was being discussed over greasy takeaways in bed because we were freaking too tired for anything else. After a while almost all relationships will need to be worked on and if you love the core of that person I would like to feel hopeful that it is possible. You aren't telling us that he is an abusive asshole, so my view would be to try and work on the relationship as much as possible.
In time you can also take back some aspects of your old life, for example travelling solo for a few days when they are a bit older. Just keep remembering that you are in the trenches at the moment.

Lots of distilled experience in this article, might be useful to spark off.

One more thing - several of my friends are now in their 40s and childless, not because they wanted to be but because either they didn't find a man they wanted to have kids with, or they did but Mr right let them down. If you'd cast your DP back as you seem to wish you had, you might have experienced the same. Womens fertility is not infinite and it gets harder to find a good partner as you get older, the pool gets smaller and smaller.

This is so sad - having had fertility issues myself, I understand how difficult this can be. And yes op, this could have well have happened as it was likely to have happened to me having a very unstable upbringing.

I am grateful to have my dc and to have found that stability. I made the right choice at the time. However, things have changed. This is not the relationship I would like for my older years. I would not choose my husband as a friend now let alone anything else. For me a lot has changed over 20+ years.

You’re not alone I could have written this myself a few years ago. You ultimately cannot stay with someone you aren’t happy or compatible with. I stayed longer for the kids and have zero regrets about that as they are my world and I wanted stability for their younger years but I want some of my life and happiness back now.

Not managed to read to the last page yet. I'm on page 11 currently and thoroughly reading the replies. There is so much wisdom here and I am so grateful for this and appreciate each post.

I've just got back home from being out with a group of friends I've not been able to catch up with since the beginning of the year. We drank wine and laughed and really caught up. The catch up was quite sobering actually. This group is a group of gay men who I spent a lot of time with in my late twenties. A few still work at my organisation but have climbed the ranks since I had my first child. One of them junior to me but now my bosses boss.

With them it was like I was almost back to my twenty something self for a few hours. The feelings almost came back. But rather than checking my phone to see if whoever I was dating had text me back, I was checking to see if DP had text with any issues about the kids. Instead of leaving and saying 'ill pop around Tuesday after work', it was left open ended not knowing how long it will be until next time.

I went through many break ups with this group by my side. I let some of them loose on my tinder account many times after a few glasses. Fun times.

Through a mixture of this thread and tonights catch up something hit me.

I've been questioning why. Why did I become such a passenger? Why did I make these choices?
You are all right that I did make an active choice somewhere along the line. This didn't happen without my knowing. But why?!

Then through the reminiscing tonight and thinking about this thread it hit me.

A long time ago, before DP I'd met someone.
It was one of these tinder dates. I regularly dated and met guys in bars, on tinder etc. like I'd said up thread I didn't really think about men in a serious way, they were transient to me.

I'd met this guy not thinking anything if it. But when I had this date I was thrown. It was like a bomb had been let off in my heart. I really did fall for him. After the date I couldn't stop thinking about him. I didn't want to see or even think about anyone or anything else. I remember thinking this is what people must feel like when they've met 'the one'.

We dated for over a year and it was bliss. It's very painful to think about that time actually. We had holidays and weekends away and I had a permanent skip in my step. I was so giddy. I'd never felt like that before.

Imagine your biggest crush as a teenager. Maybe a celebrity or a boy at school that was a few years above and didn't know you existed. Imagine him but imagine him not only suddenly existed, but knew you existed and wanted to date you. The guys before were all fine, some were gorgeous, some were plain, some had money, some were broke. But this man was everything I could've asked for and more. He ticked boxes I didn't even know i had.

Id never really fell in love before but this time I had and I couldn't even control it, it took over.

I remember my friends (the group I was with tonight) meeting him and saying they had met the male version of me.

And that right there was the problem. He was the male version of me. Flaws included.

We both had our own places. We both lived a lifestyle of pleasing ourselves and we both could walk away the minute we weren't feeling it. We both had the ability to walk away without emotional hesitation.

If I'm honest and I hate to talk about it/him because it's so painful, but I loved him so much more than he loved me. That's the truth. Me to him, was the way previous men had been to me. I was fun for the moment, great even, but not long term.

He ended it after a year together. He came to my house and we broke up. He didn't want me anymore. Id finally let my guard down and this happened.

Because we didn't live together or have any ties after he left that was it. Gone forever.

We never spoke again.

After that situation I thought wtaf am I doing. Almost like I was the player and I got played maybe? I wanted out. I didn't want to continue and resume that dating messing about shit again. I fucked around and found out.

I didn't even give myself a chance to lick my wounds. I just kicked myself, sucked it up and promised myself to not be such a pick me again.

I told myself to not date someone who doesn't tick boxes or who doesn't absolutely adore me again. I knew deep down I liked him more than he liked me, so don't do that again. It doesn't end well. Just stick to dependant, stable and solvent.

Then in walks DP.

I'm going to continue reading through this thread now for more replies about my current situation. It's been cathartic to write this down and delve deeper. I certainly need therapy. There is a lot of unresolved trauma from the past or just general (normal?) pain that ive not been able to deal with for whatever reason.

I mean this in the kindest way - you need to grow up and get into the real world. You sound like a great mother and while your kids are so little you need to focus on them and try and quiet your discontentment. Your old life is gone because of the choices you made. I’m not an advocate for sticking in a shit relationship but you have to try and commit to this life for now as it’s not all about you anymore.

100% agree.

I think either way you’re going to be miserable. If you separate you sound like you’re going to struggle without him to take on everything. You’ll go out even less than you do now. I’d stick with him at least until the kids are older. You’ll struggle to find anyone else decent if you’ve got two kids anyway so I doubt you’re missing out on any great relationship. I think staying is the lesser of two evils personally

Yes, I think individual counselling and working through some of this stuff with a decent counsellor is a good idea.
I think what I read from your latest post is that you were badly hurt and I am not sure how much time you took to process that. ‘Dependable, stable, solvent’ as criteria seems like a way of both continuing with your dating and avoiding getting hurt but maybe not stopping to process.

The other thing I read from your latest post is that your carefree twenties dating lifestyle wasn’t really that, it ended up deeply painful and you looked for something safer. That’s by definition settling if you are a person who craves excitement and emotional and sexual connection. At the same time, my experience when I got to the end of my twenties was that I wanted a family, but I had no idea really how to look for a decent husband/father. Nobody tells you this. Or at least nobody told me.
And also, the things which make a marriage and family work are different from the things which make a man exciting when you are dating. Ideally, you are both going to grow together and want similar things, but actually, in many ways, it is a leap of faith, as you don’t know what someone is actually like until you are pregnant and have the DC. will they actually pull their weight? For all that people say you can know this in advance, you don’t know what someone is like until you are actually faced with consecutive nights of little sleep and small children to look after. Whether they default to it being a woman’s role or whether they treat and respect you as an equal human with as much right to downtime.
There are many posts saying that the bar is set low if it is a case of value this man as he does his share of domestic and childcare stuff, but without such a man, the alternative is do the domestic and childcare shit all yourself and then you really do lose all your life and time, no matter how much you love your DC. And at population level, women are mostly in the position of doing most of the domestic and childcare shit whilst still also trying to keep professional and social lives going. So yes, a man who does his share counts for something.
Does this mean you need to stay with him? No, of course not. But it seems to me that you need to press pause and stop and process things, rather than make a knee jerk reaction or decide anything right now. A lot of things have happened and I am not sure you have had time to process any of them.

One other thing:

It also seems to me that you assessed this man as dependable, stable, solvent, and then he turned out to not be solvent and needed to sort that out.

It is interesting that you say dependant, stable, solvent, and not dependable, as I do not think that is what you meant, but it is what you have got in financial terms. He gives you his money to manage the finances, if I read this correctly, which gives you a task to manage. So you have the responsibility of the financial load. I have no idea whether such things are available but are there courses or training he could do about learning to budget and manage money? Not just pass the responsibility to you? He needs to become dependable here, ie you can depend on him, not be dependant.

@Thirtylifecrisis

I commented earlier on your thread, I’ve read your update to say I also went through a very similar thing. I really fell hard for someone else before I met my current DP - my kind and dependable DP. The person I fell hard for - I’d elevated to some kind of god-like status, particularly because I liked him more than he liked me. I’ve never ‘puppy dogged’ or been submissive/so weak. I did compare DP unfavourably to him, particularly when I was going through the hard parts of having children. But now, in my fifties, I know I’m with the Dad not the Lad, which is absolutely the right choice in terms of the welfare of my children.

I think a good balance in a relationship is one main financial load, and one main mental/house organisation/childcare load - and this doesn’t have to be gender specific.

And I found it useful to think of the guy I fell hard for - not in terms of ‘the one’ or any other daft romantic type notions, but more a healthy dose of biological hormones which were driving my erratic behaviour.

My daughter’s 20s were much like yours @Thirtylifecrisis and I applaud you for doing some honest soul searching and admitting that the carefree lifestyle with lots of dating does bring heartache sometimes. Not many of us can truly be as flippant about relationships as your first post suggested. In the end, attachments happen and someone gets hurt, eventually that was you.

Not trying to minimise how much fun that lifestyle can be but I’m glad you are being honest to yourself now that it was not all fantastic. I’m sorry you got badly hurt and it makes more sense now why you did tie yourself to a man you never loved. I guess you feel cheated that you made many compromises with your eyes wide open but one you feel misled by (solvency). Maybe that would have been a compromise too far had your partner been honest about his financial situation from the start.

I don’t feel I can offer advice about should you stay in this relationship or not. My instinct would be to stay for now while the children are so dependent and reassess in a couple of years. Because it would be bloody hard to be a single parent and your partner also deserves support while he is getting back on his feet financially. He’s no angel - he withheld significant information about himself after all - but he sounds a decent sort when all’s said and done. And so do you, so it’s a hard situation all round.

You are unhappy because you're with a man who is clearly your best friend and you treasure how lovely he is but you have no spark.

You need to leave him and start to date. Maybe never have a fella again. You can enjoy that bachellorate life if you get the kids 50/50

Thinking about the long term - I have a couple of decades on you - my friends who lived creative, bohemian life styles that involved lots of free spirited choices had a good thing going until a certain point. The partner pool became smaller and smaller so while the friendship connections continued on ok (with effort) it definitely wasn’t the same. They have strong opinions on dating men post 40 and their stories are pretty grim. I do think your life would have changed a lot anyway. The twenty years between 35-55 bring huge transformations. That you had emotional pain as a barrier to emotional intimacy does imply some time in counselling would be good. It’s hard to be honest and hard to know yourself. Live brings so many unexpected things - I think we all look back (if we experienced this) to when we were young and cute and full of youthful vim as a precious time.

That said, friendship, fun, adventure can all be cultivated again while you think on your relationship. My children are obviously much older than yours and are often my adventure companions. I value time spent with them in a way that was hard to appreciate when they are deep in the need stages.

My dh became ill and doesn’t work and isn’t likely too. He is very isolated and vulnerable. I run a whole separate life full of friends activities and social engagements and he absolutely supports this. I am happy in myself and it makes me able to appreciate all the different people in my life and what they bring even if it wasn’t what I once had or expected. Some ex partners are very successful, very wealthy, famous in their areas but I don’t look at them and think I missed out. They are difficult partners who have all swopped their first wives for the younger models and probs my will again. Great fun for a while but shallow, immature and ultimately unable to value anything as much as themselves. Their relationships with their children aren’t anything like the ones my husband has with ours and that creates love all round.

Find your happiness and go from there.

The pain of unrequited love made you pick somebody who'd be more greatful but ultimately less sexy and masculine

Mate...you need to grow up
This is the biggest pile of " chick lit " draft I've ever read.
If this is real you have a good guy. Let him go so someone else can appreciate him or just grow up and write the book.
Honestly. ..

I think you will really benefit from reading Lori Gottlieb’s Marry Him: The case for settling for Mr Good Enough.

you kind of settled for Mr NOT good enough at all (lack of solvency, lack of anything in common and lack of sex are way too many issues) but you sound really immature to be honest so you would benefit from reading the book anyway.

I understand a lot of what you are saying as I had REALLY fun filled twenties and most of the thirties, and have lots of girlfriends chasing these ‘exciting’ men and done my share myself. It is quite immature behaviour though (and these ‘exciting’ men would be mostly terrible as life partners and fathers and husbands). The fact that you sleepwalked into a relationship and had not one but TWO kids with basically a random guy is even more immature. You could have made the choice to continue chasing c**ck and adventures and not have children- perfectly valid option if you make it consciously.

Read the book, get lots of therapy so at least you are making CONSCIOUS choices as an adult, having thought through the consequences. Otherwise you are risking to wake up next time in an affair with another ‘exciting’ man, destroying your family life/seeing kids half the time etc.- again, one thing to do it thoughtfully, but I can just see you suddenly finding yourself in a complete disaster and asking again “ohh how did I get here?”

@Thirtylifecrisis I can't add anything useful really, but I just wanted to say that you haven't ruined your life. While you're breathing and everyone else is, nothings ruined. There will be a way to get out, you just need to think it through carefully. Good luck.

@Dressinggowntime

no, she’ll be able to go out more cos she’ll be able to go out the weekends that he has the kids

Yes but she won’t have her children. Look if you think giving up 50% of your time with your kids to go and chase some dick is a great life choice I really don’t know what to tell you.