My wife and I (I’m also female) met on a dating site. I had “doesn’t have kids and doesn’t want any” selected for the “kids info section” on my profile. We fell madly in love and got married a year later.
Before meeting her I had always said I didn’t want kids. Friends kept telling me I’d change my mind but I was certain I wouldn’t. During our engagement I realised my wife would like to have kids and I started coming round to the idea. Raising a child together with someone who love definitely has a very romantic appeal to it. Eventually I agree to having children together.
Fast forward several years. Our relationship starts experiencing more and more difficulties, mostly due to my as-of-yet undiagnosed adhd. My wife also has to deal with health issues that heavily impact her career path. At one point she tells me she thinks she’d rather nor have children after all and instead just focus on getting ahead in her training and career. I realise her telling me this makes me feel relieved.
Fast forward to last summer. Our relationship is doing pretty badly and I’m finally diagnosed with adhd after putting off getting help for almost a year. Not because I didn’t want to but, you know, life is busy, weeks go by and suddenly a whole year has passed.
Our relationship at this point is barely hanging by a thread. We talk about breaking up, that maybe we just don’t fit together because of our individual needs and personal baggage and trauma. But as I start medication and therapy and slowly find my tools to cope with adhd things start getting better and we feel happy in our relationship again.
At some point my wife starts talking about having children again. I ask her what about her telling me she didn’t want any after all and she tells me that she later realised that this wasn’t quite true, it just seemed “the smarter choice” but that she would actually very much like to have a kid.
Now, I really like children and am very good with them. The reason I never wanted any was that I didn’t want this kind of responsibility. I came around to the idea with my wife and I can see the attraction the idea has but I also realise that I myself don’t have any desire to have kids, from within myself. I was more like my wife wanted them and I didn’t feel as strongly opposed anymore to the point where I started to imagine it as a beautiful idea. But also that when she told me she didn’t want to have kids, that this would still be the option I think I’d prefer.
I think I’m slowly starting to cope better with my adhd but it’s still a struggle just to maintain a “normal adult” level of coping with day-to-day stuff. I can’t imagine adding the additional load of raising a child to this. I know kids can be great but even parents who wanted to have kids and are happy tell you that it’s super exhausting and requires a lot of planning and logistics. I don’t think I want that, I feel like regular adult life is already exhausting enough for me.
Two weeks ago my wife asked me if I was sure I didn’t want to have kids. We couldn’t continue the talk at that moment and are in the middle of a few extremely stressful weeks but I like, once they are over, we need to have a talk. I brought up my concern about adhd and she said that I was constantly getting better and that one year from now things that are still a struggle for me now probably won’t be a struggle anymore. That’s probably true but when that happens I’ll be happy as it is and don’t want to add additional stress to my life by having a kid.
Many of our friends have recently had kids and I think this is also affecting my wife. I feel bad about agreeing to have kids a few years ago and now realising I don’t think I want to have them after all. I can imagine having kids to be a beautiful experience but I think I just don’t want to have any after all, I think the stress and exhaustion would break me :(
It sounds like perhaps you only agreed to children because you love this person and want them to be happy. When you discovered.that perhaps they could be happy without the kids you were relieved. But the other person in this relationship should also be willing to do things to make you happy. And it doesn’t seem like this is what’s happening. To me it seems like she has decided that having children would make her happy and is ignoring the fact that it wouldn’t make you happy to serve her own happiness.
I think it is unreasonable to manipulate you with what might be when there are no guarantees that you will be “better enough” in a years time or five years time or whenever. Sounds to me like you’ve done some introspection and figured out that you would prefer not to and you have valid reasons which include that you just don’t want them. That’s fine.
Now it’s time for her to decide if she can live with that. Because while everyone i currently know who didn’t want children but ended up with children (including myself) is having a reasonably okay go of things, that doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t be happer without children. It also doesn’t mean that their spouses could be happy without having children.
The talk you need to have, in my opinion, is one about how to compromise on those things.
I never birthed any kids. I never wanted kids. But I did end up married to someone who already had a kid and my kid is awesome. I had the benefit of getting to know him. I had the benefit of going into everything knowing that the kid was a deal breaker (he was part of the package, so if I didn’t want that I should walk away).
Loving someone doesn’t necessarily mean sacrificing your stability and the time you need to relearn who you are (because getting diagnosed and treated/ medicated is a process in recognizing behaviors you have inherently or have developed and coming to terms with the fact that a lot of the things you knew about yourself might have just been masking behaviors). Just because she sees improvements in your ability to manage tasks and regulate emotions etc doesn’t mean that you aren’t still struggling or that you’re in the right place to have kids. The truth of it is, even other neurodivergent people don’t necessarily know your individual struggle, even if we can better relate.
Her evaluation of your situation is one sided and colored by her own wants. She is not objective.
If you don’t want children, don’t make that decision just because she does.
I think you’re right. I think I agreed to having children because I wanted to make my wife happy and because it does have a romantic appeal to it. But I think that I myself would prefer not to have children. I felt deeply relieved when she told me she didn’t want kids after all. When I’m on my “meds high” I can imagine myself having kids and enjoying it but as soon as my meds wear off I’m back to “I’d rather not”.
Diagnosed but unmedicated here. With Kids and “neurotypical” spouse. I love them all so much. It is exhausting. Everytime they wanted to add another family member I was like “no this would be too much”. Also because of my fear that I could not do them justice. Then we had another family member. Also my spouse is awesome and does jump in when I’m unable to (that happens way more often than I’d like. its up and down. She still has a hard time understanding sometimes).
Well I it is hard. We had to go through alot of shit. But I learned soooo much! I am happy in ways I never would have guessed.
But you have to realize that in 10 years you will be different people with differing needs. There will be change and learning. About yourself. About your spouse. Looots of it. Much more than if we only stayed together as a couple. You will have to deal with the fact your child, that felt like like part of your heart, is it’s own person.
All I can tell you is: my life would have been emotionally poorer and lonelier.