BF 6 years younger-can it work?

[CharJ10]

Hi everyone,
Im 37 with 7 year old DD, my bf is 31 with no children. I’d love another child in the future but aware time maybe isn’t on my side and he, quite fairly, has said he isn’t ready for children yet.
Whilst this isn’t a deal breaker right now, do you think it’s worth continuing with the relationship? He does want children eventually and I’m so worried I’ll be too old to have any more by the time he feels ready.
Would appreciate any advice. Thanks x

For the most part age is only an issue when you’re not on the same page.
It sounds very much like you’re not at the moment. How long have you been together? How much of your DD does he see? He’s not ready but he’s in a relationship with a woman who has a child…? That confuses me.

Yes it can.

How long have you been together? If it’s not long, then it’s understandable that he might not want to rush into having one.

Yes some more context might be helpful!

Weve been together around 18 months. I wasn’t asking him if he was ready for a baby right now, just if he felt he’d like children in the future. And he said he couldn’t see himself being ready even in another year. I don’t know if we’re both just setting ourselves up for heartbreak when we both very much want to be together yet I might be too old for more children by the time he feels ready to have one x

Age is not an issue. Him wanting to have a child but not yet is an issue.

Yeah the age would be an issue because if I were also 31 we would have plenty of time for him to feel ‘ready’ but, due to me being 37, I don’t have another 8 years.

That's not much of a gap. My dp is 13 years younger and we javs just had our 12th anniversary

Age gap itself isn’t an issue, more the differences in the number of fertile years you both have left and the fact you already have a DD. He could have another 20 years of child bearing time left yet. Some blokes only get there in their 40s and have a baby with a younger woman. You obviously don’t have many years yet and you may not want a huge gap between your DD and future DC. Nothing wrong with a big gap between DC but it is something which impacts the situation and your decision.

The age difference is a non issue if you’re both on the same page. Dh is 7 years younger than me. But I made it clear from the start what my intentions were and that biologically there was a realistic time frame if we wanted a family.

We met when he was 21, got married at 24, had our first dc at 25 (I was 28, 31, and 32). We’ve been together 17 years now very happily.

The issue here is you are 37 and that’s on the older end to be dating with the expectation of having more children. It doesn’t really matter that he’s 31. He could be 40, but you’ve only been together a bit over a year and that’s probably too soon for anyone to decide if they want to have children with someone.

The time to meet someone new, dating for long enough to introduce to your DD, then knowing each other well enough/being at the stage in a relationship to have a baby, is probably 3 years, but at least 2. And there's no guarantee you'll meet that person, at least not straight away. If your current relationship is good and you are both serious, your dd likes him and they get on, and you want to have kids with him, leaving for some hypothetical relationship and hypothetical child doesn't make sense if he wants kids in the next few years.

For some reason I’ve found this to be more of a thing in my lesbian world, but I can’t say enough: please.get.your.fertility.checked! It costs around £450 and gives you so much insight it’s worth every penny (if you have the means obv).

My wife is 7 years older than me and when we were at the same stage as you, we got her fertility checked and thankfully it was great, so we could enjoy the next year or 2 as a care free couple before we embarked on having children. If it was a bad result, at least we would know whether we should be looking at egg collecting, whether we just weren’t compatible at that stage of life or whether I would feel ready to go for it. Knowledge is power and at the moment you would be basing any decisions off of speculation and speculation only.

FWIW that was 6 years ago, we had a great few years of travel & events, got married and now have 2 children. I’m not sure we would be in that position if we hadn’t done the fertility testing as I wasn’t ready and she was feeling time pressure due to age.