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?

This a million times. We were all kids once for goodness sake!

I used to have a friend like this, one by one we all had kids and she eeventually stopped being invited to things as she was so rude and unpleasant about it! She then met and married someone with three boys. I felt very sorry for them as she will have been horrible to them.

This is fucked up. I thought my SIL hated kids, but this is making her seem like a Mary Poppins.

Kids are not my thing. Don't really know how to be with them, but they are humans and deserve to exist.

I would have suggested that if you want to stay together, you just live separate lives. But it doenst work if she is unhappy for you too see your parents because they love their grandkids. She needs therapy.

@ Anotherparkingthread you are a sociopath love, please seek some therapy before you act on these violent urges you experience. Hopefully you can unpack whatever childhood trauma you experienced. These feelings are not normal.

Everyone is entitled a child free life if that’s what they choose, but you aren’t entitled to a child free world.
The thing is you and your DP have conflicting family values, you have them and she doesn’t.
You have every right to be close to your family and she has the right to not be close to hers, it sounds like the trauma there is strong.
I know you don’t want to leave her, but this will continue to wedge itself between you until you break or she wins and isolates you from your family

How can you not want to split up with her when she's so vile to your family and friends?

Dump her.

This would be an absolute dealbreaker for me. I couldn't continue to love someone who actively despised my family and would treat them like crap and make everyone feel uncomfortable. Love would quickly turn to resentment. You can pretend all you want that she's a nice person, but clearly she's not. You've only got one life and this is no way to spend it. Will you not eventually regret losing your relationship with your own family, quality time spent with your parents while they're still alive etc.

Before I had kids of my own (especially when I was younger) I certainly found kids quite annoying and a but gross when they had food smeared all over their faces but this is a pretty extreme position 😂

What about as you age? How do you see the future? Seems to me that she just tolerates you in her world and that's it. You'll grow apart from your family and friends. It'll just be the two of you. Is that enough for you?

Wow @Anotherparkingthread that is very disturbing. Not even my DP would go that far. You need serious help.

To address a few points that have come up in the replies (and there's a lot for me to think about here) -

The only member of her family she has any contact with is her mother, who lives a long way away in another country which is expensive to get to. So we don't see her in person often, though they speak very regularly. I think part of the issue with my family might originate in DP's sense of guilt at being so far away and that then gets projected as resentment of my family. She is going to see her mother for an extended trip soon, so I'm living in hope that things might improve after that. We will have to see.

Someone asked if she "likes anyone" or has friends of her own. Well, she is in touch with some old friends in her country of origin, though does't see them often for obvious reasons. Many of her other old friends are scattered around the world and she often complains about being "out of sight, out of mind". But she doesn't seem to go out of her way to try to build a new social circle of her own outside of work. Sometimes I get the feeling that she's only really interested in getting to know people if they might be useful in some way.

She doesn't stop me seeing my family on my own, so I still have a relationship with them. But the snide remarks/expressions when I do so are hurtful.

She's civil with my parents when we meet them without sister/kids present, and she doesn't go out of her way to cause arguments. But if the children are mentioned in conversation it's like she completely shuts down. Or she will find some way express disapproval about how often my parents are seeing the children. In private she frames this as concern about how often my parents are driving up and down the country at their age, and seems angry about my sister using them as "free childcare". I've tried to explain that any visiting and childcare arrangements between parents/sister aren't her concern, that my parents want to be actively involved and that they don't know how to slow down (and don't want to). But it just doesn't go in - I think largely because of her unprocessed childhood trauma which has left her with a huge empathy void and deep suspicion of anything family related.

Oh, I'm so sorry, it must be incredibly tough and your partner's attitude sounds toxic. 41 is not too old to have children at all. My husband was 42 when our last child was born. I had a friend who was married to an older woman. Initially things were fine, but then his brother had a baby and he watched her growing. When she turned 5, he started regretting his decision to remain childless.
It sounds like your family is very happy and your partner seems envious of how happy they are. In the long term, I don't think you are compatible.

This. ^ I find people who dislike children (and as you say, often make it their entire personality,) the most unlikeable individuals. Seriously, how can you possibly dislike all children? Do you know every child in the world? No you don't, so grow up FFS!

As has been said, the ones who claim they 'hate' children, are way more childish and petulant than the children they claim to despise so much.

I can only surmise that there is some deep rooted reason for this - or it's a defence mechanism for people who don't want children, and they are fed up of people asking about them. The 'I hate children' brigade are incredibly tedious. As you say, constant snide comments about women who are mothers, how all children are brats, how women are 'domestic slaves' once they have children, and how people who have children are 'breeders.'

Vile.

nb: not all child free people are like this obvs!

@conflicted84

she sounds very socially inadequate.

I would dump her, Op

The fact that she's not prepared to make the effort to get along with your family would be a dealbreaker for me. She doesn't have to like children but she should certainly make the effort to be pleasant and spend time with your family for birthdays and events. She sounds like she's jealous and possessive of you.

I think fundamentally you're incompatible. She's not willing to change and her behaviour is upsetting for you. You have a choice then - stay and put up with it or leave 🤷‍♀️

I have to say, I was also at the post by @Anotherparkingthread (at 00.52 today/page 1.)

I mean WTAF?!

And as other posters have said @conflicted84 you need to dump this awful woman!

Who does she like besides you? She hates children an masse and despises parents, which is already quite a large percentage of the general population. She hates her own family and yours too. Does she have friends? But quite a lot of them must be parents..
Don’t embarrass yourself with a woman like that. Our chosen partners always reflect upon us, more than we think. They represent something about us. Why we chose them, why we love them, tolerate them, put up with them etc..

This is the weird thing: in social settings if we do go out in an environment where kids aren't present (we both work in a field where there are often "fancy" dinners etc, for example, and we go to concerts/theatre reasonably often and run into people we know) she's incredibly lively and charming. Same if we meet up with any of her friends when they happen to be over in this country. So "socially inadequate" doesn't fit. Put her with my family or friends, though, and it's a whole different story.

Right? That poster needs to be on some kind of watch list. Very, very disturbing post.

I wonder if deep down perhaps your DP does have some difficult feelings about her own childlessness but doesn’t feel able to accept and engage with the feelings/urge because there’s too much water under the bridge now, with her childhood trauma, life set up, and the fact you don’t want your own either. I think it might be manifesting itself quite negatively in this almost childish revulsion to them. She daren’t connect with any maternal parts of herself, so she’s pushing them as far away as she can.

It’s sad, she probably needs some therapy, or a partner with less investment in his extended family, etc.

I agree. @Anotherparkingthread have you sought any kind of therapy for your quite frankly, terrifying and disturbing thoughts about children?

@Anotherparkingthread mate, there’s something seriously not right there. It’s one thing not to like children, but…

@conflicted84 my advice is to find someone with a bit more tolerance.

With your update she sounds like a deeply messed up person who needs a lot of therapy and is possibly very lonely. Therefore she needs to despise people with loving families. She has to convince herself she is great as she is.

I have been lonely in the past and yes, it made me sour and bitter. I tried my best to mask it though, because that is what an adult does.

another one agreeing she is bad news. Read up on narcissists. The fact that she tries to control your social interactions, is nasty when you.dont go along with her by making horrible comments, is only interested in people who benefit her etc etc are all massive red flags. She is not a nice person. She is a user who sees you.as being of use to her at present for who knows what reason. It won't get better. It will only get worse.

She definitely needs therapy!'

It really baffles me why women like this have lovely boyfriends who are family oriented, that put up with their girlfriends strange behaviour and love them, when women like me and some of my friends are so kind and loving and we are single!

Honestly, you sound lovely (and definitely not too old for kids if you'd like one) and if you were single and on dating apps you would find beautiful, intelligent women that have great careers and hobbies and have worked on themselves via therapy and are ready to be in great relationships.

@Anotherparkingthread

you sound a bit fucked up tbf