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.

@Ilikeadrink14 yep- I like to be positive so lucky you !! (And him) and let's be honest still fancying someone 30 or 40 years down the line is I guess a very individual thing- I think many women if I'm honest simply don't ( plenty of men too)

I do think there are some who genuinely are really happy in 'all' aspects - even in long relationships- I just personally don't know that many - but I know many who muddle by and have accepted the downsides for the fact they appreciate the upsides.

My god, I must have been the one of the luckiest women on the planet! Married 54 years until my husband died. He was absolutely great in all ways. I am sorry so many people don’t seem to have this.

Ilikeadrink I think you were very fortunate and I am so very sorry for your loss.

I am sorry you find yourself in the predicament op. Mistakes were made and I made them too, although they were right at the time in my instance. I have 3 wonderful dc. They are hard work. They are getting older now and in many ways it is getting easer. I wouldn't be without them. My pregnancy with dc3 was in the aftermath of a loss and if I'm honest relationship issues had begun to kick in by then, so not properly thought through. However, it is not the children with whom I feel unhappy, it is my relationship. They do however, make leaving more difficult due to my own particular circumstances.

I hope you are doing okay op. I really feel for you but it has been a comfort reading your thread and hearing from others who have similar experiences. I have felt alone with this for quite some time.

It sounds to me like the poster who has had a change in lifestyle got a new lease of life!

It sounds to me like the poster who has had a change in lifestyle got a new lease of life!

Yes, this has happened to me to some extent also.

Why on earth did you have two children especially so close together , if you really don’t want to be with your partner?

It's good that you got it all down, Having and raising babies is hard and really un sexy. (I have a 9 month old and he's my first baby). It's natural to grieve for the life you had and alot has happened in a short time. Covid was such a strange surreal time and dealing with the loss of your Dad, you've been through alot. Family life doesn't have the same excitement or spontaneity that single young life holds. Your body will be all over the place with your hormones and the chaos of having two young children and grieving for your Dad. It's really good that you sought help and had some couples counselling. Would you consider having counselling just for you? A chance for you to have some time for yourself. It's really tricky but all that you say is valid, we can miss our old lives and have regrets. It's whether we can learn to live with the regrets or need to do something about it... I would try to not do anything rash, you've been through alot and try not to be hard on yourself either, but I'd try work at it with your partner, no man is perfect and it's easy to romanticise our dreams and the grass is greener. Another thing is that if you had done things differently, you wouldn't have your children. My MIL strongly dislikes her ex husband but she wouldn't have had her sons who are her pride and joy without him. Sometimes things just happen and we have to see where life takes us. .

@Ilikeadrink14 and I forgot to say, I'm so sorry for your loss too. I spoke to my next door but one yesterday who is early 80s and has now been on her own for 3 years- wants to move as it's huge house and garden but feels it would be leaving all her memories and clearly adored her husband

Another thing is that if you had done things differently, you wouldn't have your children. My MIL strongly dislikes her ex husband but she wouldn't have had her sons who are her pride and joy without him. Sometimes things just happen and we have to see where life takes us.

This. Hold onto this.

@UnfriendMe Interesting you choose to use your “free time” on Mumsnet 🤔

I hope very much that the adults around you did not think you were horrible when you were a child.

Your post is actually quite sad.

As someone who has always wanted to settle down and have kids, but never been in the right relationship or circumstances, this was incredibly hard to read. You have so much that many other people, myself included, would be so grateful for. I think you need to do some serious self reflection and maybe even seek counselling if you think this just "happened." You were fully aware, present, and presumably making decisions together to have more kids.

Saying that having a family has ruined your life feels like a horrendous thing to say, particularly when you seem to have found a man who is your 50/50 partner and is doing a good job parenting the kids. Imagine if they saw this post?

You're with the wrong person, that's all.
Relationships end every day and families are divided; but that doesn't make saying your family ruined your life any less cruel.

To be honest it sounds a bit spoilt and entitled longing for the freedom and carelessness of your 20s. Perhaps you should have planned more carefully if this isn't what you wanted.

And if your partner isn't right for you, the only choice is to leave and deal with whatever happens after that.

Again, this was really hard to read - it's OK to be unhappy but it's not ok to blame your unhappiness on your family and your husband,none of whom, it would seem, have done anything wrong! Take accountability for your own decisions and your own unhappiness and please seek professional help.

I completely relate to this. I completely lost who I was the moment I had my daughter.
I wish I had something more positive to say but I have never got my “whimsical self” back and she is now 13. I stuck with her dad through lockdown even though we split up in 2018. I knew he wasn’t the one for me six months in but I was already pregnant. She has told me herself that I did the right thing to try and give her a father by sticking with him for her sake. We both know I was damned whatever I did. My daughter has additional needs and now won’t talk to her dad but for me I did the right thing because my mental health would have massively suffered as a single parent. My new partner now has a seven-year-old, our daughters don’t blend and that can be incredibly difficult in itself. He split up with his ex-wife when she was four. She is still messed up about it and still asks why they can’t all live together. The financial fallout on him has been massive and he is often depressed and suicidal over all the years he wasted working for what ended up in financial ruin when they divided the household. Even though I wouldn’t be without him, I believe they should have been more savvy about how they divided the wealth and possibly thought about coparenting and staying together a few more years. I’m afraid your kids are a permanent ball and chain and you will never get back to who you were before. That doesn’t mean to say that you can be a better version of who you were but never the same and never free as before. You could leave your DP and lose a huge amount of freedom because you would lose the help he gives you with the children. I speak from experience because now my daughter won’t see her dad I have no one to leave her with for more than a few hours… Ever! The children could be really messed up about it and present with anxiety, sleeping difficulties and OCD like my partner’s daughter. Agree with people that you are probably balancing your hormones so soon after giving birth. Do nothing for awhile and then I think a compromise is in order. I think you should be honest with your partner about how you are feeling, Put the ball more in his court that way but maybe see if you can stick it out together and work on the relationship. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t I’m afraid now that you have the kids. they are a passion killer in any relationship.

Sorry if that’s a bleak perspective but it’s the truth in my experience.

Hi, in reading your post I see some things I could possibly help with. You may or may not like what I have to say. I’m speaking from a lot of experience actually. To me, it sounds like you never loved the man. That’s unfair to him to stay in the relationship as even though he may be crushed if you left him, and clearly he would want to hold his kids in the best family position possible, in the long run it might give him a chance to find a partner who actually appreciates him; he sounds like a good man! I don’t know if you realise how lucky you are although you sound like you maybe do theoretically understand? It is very hard to find a man like that honestly! It sounds like he is doing what a stay at home mom normally does, and stay at home Moms don’t generally get great recognition. You’re somewhat of the “man”
in the situation, not that that’s a bad thing at all; just using general gender stereotypes. You seem too “free” and grumbly to do that job. It’s nice that he takes up the slack because someone has to do that work with the kids! That is an absolute full-time job and he seems to do it with grace and joy it sounds like from you! I guarantee you will realise how much he does after you both part, which I think eventually you may have to. The question is do you do it now or later?
To be honest, you sound a bit selfish. However, you are important and your happiness is important not only to yourself but also to your children. From what you said, you had one life and you dreamed to have another kind of life with a family, but now that you have that kind of life you’re unhappy with that life. So it goes to say that you probably would be unhappy with any situation and look back and maybe have some regrets if you did leave him. At the same time, this would be a huge learning experience going through a break up. You’re lucky you’re not married as that would cause another whole host of issues! But your children are important and I would say to stay in a relationship for your kids which everybody says to do, is not necessarily correct. Because then you will have regrets the longer you stay if you really don’t love this man, and it sounds like you do not and never have. Then you’ll become even more resentful and you will start fighting with him which the kids will notice as well. Let him be free from this, and you will too, although it sounds like you just like the unfettered life where you get to do whatever you want. And it’s true, now you have kids that you are responsible for. At least 50%.

My advice to you is if and when you do leave this man, which might be the most fair to him despite him not wanting it, is to have a good relationship for the sake of your kids. Because the kids feel breakups the most. It is very important that the parents stay on the same team which I did not with my ex. I did not with my ex because I was in a similar situation as you and made money but that piece of shit literally didn’t do anything to help me so you at least have a guy that helps and is a good father! My ex took tons of my money because I was married to him and he still does not support his own kids even with the money I gave him! so I landed up absolutely not having a good relationship with him which hurt my kids, but there’s no excuse in my mind for a guy like that. He made his own decisions. And for the record I’m married to an amazing man now who helps me all the time, even though I do make more money! And I actually love him which is really important as the love and respect you have for a person is what keeps you through those hard times that every marriage has.

So I’d say because he sounds like a good man, he deserves to have a partner that appreciates and loves him back. You also deserve to have the life you think you want, and I guarantee you will learn many lessons along the way. And someday you may want to settle but hopefully it will be with a person you love and want to endure the hardships with!

I know you may not like my answer, but I speak with a lot of experience and hopefully you can take what I say and take what you want or need and don’t take what you don’t. But I hope the best for you both! All the people in the situation matter… but sometimes one person has to make the hard decision. Maybe have a conversation with your man about what’s the best and how to best deal with going forward if you break up for the kids’ sake. There’s always an adjustment, but if you stay close and you both get to see the kids regularly, kids adapt rather quickly.
It’s very hard, but I can guarantee to you that being married helps a lot! The break up is much more smooth.

I dunno about the other people’s advice to be honest. Ask yourself would it better for you if you split up? Really? Sure you’re unhappy now but would it actually be better if you were a single parent? You would have less help than now. Less money. I went through feeling like this when my children were very small. I was very unhappy and would have ended it for a period of about a year but I didn’t see how it would be better for anyone if I did. I imagined getting the weekend off because they would go to their dads and I really, really wanted the weekends off. I can honestly say this period passed. I am genuinely very happy with my husband now. It was a blip. Maybe give yourself a year and if your still so unhappy then sure, but your baby is still only 6 months old so you still have hormones to deal with and honestly- in a couple of years it gets so much easier. You will have your life back. Just don’t make any decisions that will effect your children so drastically until you are absolutely sure.

Don’t feed the troll.
Someone that bitter who hates children and apparently people who have them spends time posting on a parenting website?
Something doesn’t add up.

I'm reading your description of your partner and he sounds like a great partner and father, probably better than 90% of men out there.
The general vibe I got from your description is that you don't respect him. You think he should be far more financially successful and physically, maybe he's not your idea of the archetypical attractive man. You seem to put a lot of stress on your expectations in those areas.

I am going to take the very un-British (hence the name) stance of pointing out the elephant in the room: sex and your lack of satisfaction in that area.

I think your lack of acceptance of financial failure is a reflection of your lack of acceptance of sexual failure.

Men have hangups. That's normal yet we have a culture where men are discovering vulnerability then being judged for it. Gender equality slowly establishing itself but in a completely dysfunctional and incomplete way.

Have you spoken to your partner about your sexual thoughts, about what would excite you? Even if it ends up being "going for a shag with a random guy that isn't you" (but you have to be careful with others' feelings when communicating such things)

One of my closest friends left her lifelong partner (whom she had finally married a few weeks before she started cheating) and went chasing her highschool sweetheart followed by a string of casual encounters. She was clearly unhappy and unfortunately I am not sure her unhappiness could have been fixed but ultimately she has found another partner after a couple of years and is slowly rebuilding her life, while her ex-husband moved in with a new partner, tried to rebuild a new family. I think she looks at what he has with a certain envy now.

Ultimately I don't think she ever really respected her husband, never realised what she had. She put such high expectations on him.

I'd suggest you look at ways of having fun with your partner, try a new activity together. See what kind of fun you can have as a family rather than seeing fun as something that only exists for single people. Maybe look at him and listen to him a bit more and see what he has to offer. Try to see his qualities (you've enumerated a long list of tasks he performed but not really referred to him as a human-being).

Of course there is such a thing as incompatibility but maybe give your partner a bit more of a chance.

Baby is 6 months old. I think it’s pretty normal to not have much sex with a baby that young, let alone when you have 2. I mean, most people are just knackered. It comes back when you get more sleep.

I want to edit my last section. I meant to say being “not married” helps a lot. The breakup can be more focused on what is best as opposed to fighting over assets and shit like that. The worst in people comes out in the situations of divorce.
I also want to add that to talk about yourself as a single parent when you have a guy so involved is simply not true. You don’t need to be felt sorry for if you make decisions to live differently than you are now. Make your decisions and take responsibility for them. Make your decisions and take responsibility for them. You would most likely have them halftime and it sounds like you would be doing more work for your kids than you are now since he does the majority of the work with them! I would really hope that you would never try to take your kids away from their father as that would crush them and him and he obviously doesn’t deserve that!

You seem to have the opportunity to cherry pick to some degree how you spend your time. Simplistically, while he does the childcare, shopping and childcare, you seem to have the chance to focus more on working and going out. You complain (I understand why) that it's not working for you. So make it work for you. Pursue your career harder and party with colleagues after work. Find a man in a similar position and have a discreet relationship - there are agencies that help with this. Have separate holidays. If it's still not working in the long term, wait until the children are teenagers and separate. Things will have changed by then.
Good luck to both of you.

My God you come across as really selfish. Don't blame lockdown for all this, you should have resolved this years ago. Now you have two children to consider as well as their poor father. Were you not using contraception? If not, why not?

If a man said iv`e ruined my life by having a family he would would be battered on here.

Not if it wasn’t there before.

No matter what you do you will have problems, and probably find many things unsatisfactory. Instead of looking at how bad things are, find a way to find some joy. Perhaps consider and open relationship if the sex is not good. Surely he is aware that that is also not good. Just keep the extra relationship out of the house. Your primary consideration should be the good of the children. They don't need to attach to someone who's here today, gone tomorrow.

Also, you may want to be screened for post partum depression.

You haven't ruined your life, you've had kids. They don't get any easier. Remain selfish and you're heading for problems. If you genuinely don't want to be with this man be fair and tell him. Don't drag him through court, and be fair. He loves his kids. Agree your split and then agree fairness with your children. If you think another man will happily take you all on and maintain your lust and desire you are very wrong. I've been there and now I'm paying the price.

Do the same as everyone else with two small children and a job. Google should I get divorced. We all did it. Several times. All partners are ass-holes. You included. Maybe even especially you.

OP, you’re being cruel.
why did you move in with a man who you don’t click with sexually or emotionally? you also CHOSEN to have multiple children. Why on earth complain now…?

my partner and I moved in together two years ago. He does most of the house work, as I work slightly longer hours, and we have very few shared interests. We love food, going on holiday, and horror movies, but it stops there. But, we make it work. He takes me shopping (which he hates) and I’ll watch a movie or show with him that I don’t enjoy.
Sometimes, sex dries up while we’re dealing with bigger issues, such as last year, the house was SO cold and there was a long walk to the bathroom, so neither of us wanted to take our clothes off, lol. We also had to deal with my very painful IUD taking the oomph away, but I tried not to worry about it. It doesn’t matter really, the sex thing is the least important part of any relationship.

your poor partner, OP. So many women deal with truly careless men - yours sounds like a good one. The ED really isn’t his fault, you can’t hold it against him. That’s cruel. Equally, the debt you knew about early enough to walk away. you made your bed. Now lie in it.

wait for him to pay of debts, maybe go on a few holidays, maybe even let a trusted person have the kids for a weekend while you go on a trip to reconnect. Surely there’s a reason you moved in with him to start…..?