DP hates children

[conflicted84]

Repost, with full text this time.

I (male, 41) have been with my OH (female, 37) for over 7 years now.

Early on she made it very clear she didn't want children and that was OK with me as I felt I was too old to be a good father, had taken a long time to get established in my career, and did not have much of a paternal instinct, but was very happy to be an uncle to my nephews/nieces. Otherwise we were on the same wavelength and got on well, and still do for the most part.

My sister on the other hand has young children who are adored by all the family, and this has become a massive source of tension in our relationship, getting worse year by year, to the point I'm not sure where things go.

When OH and I first got together it was not long prior to the pandemic and sister only had 1 child. Fast forward a few years and sister now has 2 more. DP and I had the experience of living together under very intense pandemic conditions while things were still pretty new for us. That seemed to go OK. Where things have gone wrong is the post-pandemic years where I've been trying to get her to engage more with my family. I'm talking maybe 3-4 events a year at most, think Christmastime and significant birthdays where immediate family + partners might be invited. Other smaller or ad-hoc get-togethers I would happily go to on my own, but it's important to me that we turn up together to "significant" family events and my family would probably ask concerned questions about the state of my relationship if I always turned up without her, as you can probably imagine.

Even this limited level of family engagement has been a struggle to put it mildly. At first it was at a fairly normal level of "slight unease around in-laws" which I assumed might be alleviated by better familiarity, but over the last couple of years in particular things have steadily got more and more tense to the point where I feel like I'm torn between my partner and my family.

DP's point of view seems to have shifted from "don't like children" to "actively despise them". Any time there is any kind of family event where children might be present I have to fight with her to get her to attend, and if she does attend then she spends the whole time sulking and pretty much refusing to speak to anyone. She is barely civil to my sister and brother in law, giving monosyllabic answers at best when they try to engage her in conversation, and looks through the children as though they do not even exist.

If I go without her she still finds a way to make passive-aggressive remarks about my family before and/or after the event, such as implying that I should just mail birthday presents rather than delivering them to my nephews/nieces in person (even though we live relatively close by and she knows I like seeing them) or making scoffing noises/rolling her eyes when I say I need to leave at X time to be there for such and such an event.

Even if we meet my parents without my nieces/nephews present she seems to try to find a way to start an argument, because she seems to resent my parents having a close relationship with their grandchildren. She also insinuates frequently that my parents somehow value me less than their grandchildren or that they give my sister more support than me - even though I've tried to explain repeatedly that this isn't the case and that it's quite normal for grandparents to dote on their grandchildren anyway.

This also gets echoed in my relationships with friends, most of whom now have children. She's still not met quite a few of my oldest friends and has turned down opportunities to meet them - if they have children she seems to pre-emptively write them off with sarcastic comments about how they've given up perfectly good careers, etc.

OH had an abusive childhood and I think a lot of this stems from the fact that she never knew "normal" family dynamics and never knew her own aunts/uncles/grandparents. She also seems to think that her mother (who was in an abusive marriage) ruined her own life and career by having children in the first place, and projects that onto other people who have children - hence frequent remarks at home about women "throwing away their lives", children in general being entitled, colleagues with children "skiving" when they are on holiday, and so on and so forth.

I think there is a lot of unresolved trauma here - almost as though she views herself as needing to avenge her mother - and a lot of fear or uncertainty on her part as to how to engage with family dynamics where children are involved. That said, she refuses to seek therapy - her view seems to be either that she knows better, or that nothing could help anyway. I try to support her as much as I can, and on a day to day basis it doesn't really factor into our interactions with one another as we have busy lives and don't have daily interactions with family. But it is getting to the point now where it is poisoning relations between me and my family whenever there's any sort of family event. We have had numerous arguments over the last few years where it feels like she is growing increasingly resentful of me wanting to have a relationship with my own nephews and nieces.

I don't want to split up with her. In private she is funny, clever, and incredibly supportive of me. But when it comes to meeting my family (or my friends) they are faced wtih indifference at best or even hostility, and that's beginning to spill into our private lives.

I'm at the end of my tether. After 7 years it feels like things should get easier, not more difficult. What do I do?

OP you sound lovely.

I would cut my losses as she sounds abusive the way she scoffs and generally tires to belittle you in many ways. This is unlikely to change even with the best efforts of talking. And no you cant fix her. This is who she is, and her behavior is very loud here, and should be telling you to stop fixing things and seek someone who is going to value you, your family and your joint life ahead.

@Anotherparkingthread

ah, you don’t ruffle me, just think you’re a bit of an oddball. Why do you love yourself in and out so much?

“Why do you love yourself in and out so much?”

It’s a somewhat silly question. I think most people love themselves, which is natural and healthy. I don’t mean the narcissistic self-adoration, but that healthy amount of self-love when you want the best for yourself and would never knowingly harm yourself. I certainly have it. I can find faults in/on/about myself, I am far from perfect, I am fallible, even a “sinner”, but I love myself, and I think most people feel the same way about themselves. It is a necessary part of life and self-preservation.

i get that, I’m just curious as to what it is in particular that @Anotherparkingthread loves about herself

I'm getting an awful lot of questions not really relating to the original post in any way.

Which at this point is derailing at best and prying at worse. I likeyself plenty enough to not bother answering any more questions which don't relate directly to the original post or my op on this thread and massive dislike of children.

I can completely understand not wanting to have children, it's not mandatory. But to actively hate them, en masse!? And it even seems that she doesn't like anyone who does have or like children. Throw this weirdo back.

Actually mine was relevant. It might explain why you come across the way you do.

It’s because people have always been fascinated by the origin of evil 😄
”Is it nature, is it nurture?” 🤔
“Did they have an abusive childhood?” 🤔
yada yada…

You are a good case study 😁

The origin of evil.

Putting that one on my CV 😂

"Very lonely" is accurate, I think - but it's something she doesn't seem to make any effort to fix.

She's sometimes spoken about not knowing quite where she belongs because she has several nationalities and grew up overseas but moved around a lot before eventually settling here. She's geographically isolated from a lot of her old friends now, hasn't made any real effort to get to know anyone new, and is alienated from most of her family. My own family have gone out of their way over the years to be welcoming and she's thrown it back in their faces.

A large part of me thinks she has a very deep seated fear of rejection going back to her childhood, which ironically only makes that outcome more likely given how it presents itself to others.

Fucking hell dude. Were you drinking when you typed that out?

There seems to be a lot of effort on your part to understand her, as evidence by what you've written in your multiple posts? Do you think she makes the same effort or care to understand you?

DP's point of view seems to have shifted from "don't like children" to "actively despise them". Any time there is any kind of family event where children might be present I have to fight with her to get her to attend, and if she does attend then she spends the whole time sulking and pretty much refusing to speak to anyone. She is barely civil to my sister and brother in law, giving monosyllabic answers at best when they try to engage her in conversation, and looks through the children as though they do not even exist

The fact she seems to despises them is a red flag to me and so is her rude, hostile behaviour. I understand being annoyed with children or not feeling particularly maternal towards them, but to actively dislike them? I find that almost misanthropic.

At the same time, even though it might be awkward, I think you should let her off the hook every now and again and not fight her to attend so many events, as you say. However, this must not interfere with you attending them, and there should be no weirdness or sulking before or after you do so.

@Anotherparkingthread I genuinely find they make me want to react with incredible voilence if they are too loud

You're a walking red flag.

Okay, so she has had a rough upbringing but she needs to take steps to address her issues.

As it is she is she is a very unpleasant person, so why are you with her…

@EarthSight "There seems to be a lot of effort on your part to understand her, as evidence by what you've written in your multiple posts? Do you think she makes the same effort or care to understand you?"

Gosh, that's a penetrating question. Honestly, no, probably not, and I'd not thought of it that way.

I thought we'd made some progress recently in that she'd gone from outright resistance to a totally blank "OK" when I mentioned a couple of upcoming events (Christmas 2024, and a couple of major birthdays) after a very long and upsetting conversation - well, to be honest, one where I did most of the talking and tried to explain how important these were to me. Now I think of it, I just got blank/angry stares in reply, though she seemed upset that I was upset if you see what I mean. But then her behaviour at those events was exactly the same as before, only less overtly disdainful and more passive-aggressive.

There have probably been more gatherings over the last 12 months than the norm simply due to significant birthdays etc (and my family admittedly go a bit OTT sometimes given that they are numerous and geographically widespread). But normally it's more like 2-3 occasions a year and even that seems to be too much for her.

Sounds like a sociopath to me. Fine to not like children but to this degree is pretty grotesque to be honest.

"Why are you with her"

Quite a few people have asked that. I think we were two rather lonely people who found one another (despite my closeness to my family I am very very different from them in a lot of ways, and despite having close and long-lasting friendships I've never been good at finding romance). We have similar senses of humour, taste in music and books, love of food and cooking, similar education, similar careers and ambitions, and so on and so on. We seem to "get" one another. The one thing that this thread is all about seemed like an unimportant detail in the first few years (neither of us wants children, no big deal) but has metastasised recently into something much darker and more destructive, and that's why I'm here.

The more I think of it the more I begin to think "Niles Crane and Maris" if that makes sense...

@Anotherparkingthread
As a matter of interest how do you think society would exist if women followed your mantra of women not sacrificing their career for children ?
How would your pension get paid ?
How would all public services function ?
Most importantly for you .. how would the country provide the infrastructure for harbours and slip ways for your beloved boats ? How would the lifeguard be financed ?
No kids = No future tax payers,

OTOH
The traits of extreme narcissism (if it stems from contempt, superiority, or lack of empathy). Which tbh it sounds like it does - warrant a trip to your health care provider for a referral .

I used to live off grid and I still have an off grid house so I'd be fine. I hate the 'future tax payers' argument. And I never said we should murder all kids, that was a bunch of other people on this very thread who claim to care about children. I explicitly stated I don't care about other people's children and don't want them anywhere near me.

Eventually society will stop replacing itself, or disease or something else will come and it will happen anyway. Lack of natural resources, the fact the world is burning. It's sort of inevitable, so I'd probably say on an individual level you can't really plan for it on the scale of societal collapse. If you did try to counter the largest current reason for falling birth rates, do you proposed forcing women into pregnancy? See, once you bring in large-scale nonsense hypotheticals you have to death with large scale nonsense problems.

And genuinely interested, what lifeguard? It's not a swimming pool. Do you mean the coastguard? I've never needed them.

"I never said we should murder all kids"

You sound like a lovely man and you are clearly wasting your time with this woman. Please split up with her and find somebody more suitable. There are plenty of woman that will fit into your family better. Well done for noticing the signs of a woman trying to isolate you from your family, so many men just blindly turn their backs on their family on a whim when a woman says so. You clearly have a backbone and it is time to act on it by breaking free.

Is that supposed to be a meme?

I love how I express that i hate kids and because women aren't allowed to feel that way and I've in a round about way insulted everybody, I'm basically satan now.

Think about it like chimps. I think chimps are gross. I skip their enclosure at the zoo. I won't bother watching animal documentaries about them. I'm never going to sponsor one for some animal charity. But equally I'm not rallying a hunting party and setting off into the jungle.

My life has very few children in it, by design. I don't have anything I have to do where I encounter them. All in all it's an ideal situation for both me and the kids that I would otherwise murder.

You've grown up, mellowed and moved on with life. She is stuck in some other odd phase

She sounds quite arrogant Op. Looking through people? I have to speak to people I don’t particularly like all the time. I’m not arrogant enough to think I can ignore / be rude to them. There is something wrong with this woman Op. And it’s getting worse.