Husband of 10 years says he doesn’t want kids or a suburban life
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Anonymous
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Your husband will probably be able to handle one kid, but not two. Two kids is a crazy ballgame of stress and misery and no time for yourself. It’s also harder to compromise as you get older and kids require you to pretty much compromise everything. He will be miserable.
Sad, but true. |
Anonymous
New poster. OP, my friend and her then-DH did both want a child and the guy was a genuinely loving, close dad for the first few years. But the red flag was when, as their son hit toddlerhood, the DH said he didn't want the "suburban life" and that he felt "burdened" by house, yard (tiny townhouse so a mere postage stamp yard!!), didn't want to "live the white picket fence life my parents lived," blah blah. I think he just wanted to do as he pleased--he wanted to have jobs where he could work certain shifts to have time for his hobbies, rather than dealing with day to day finances, home, child responsibilities. To this day, many years later, he thinks he was and is the greatest dad, he just needed to be a free spirit.... So you can even have a man who does love his child, and wants his child around (on dad's terms of course) but the stuff about "I don't want a suburban life" is a huge red flag too. I means "I don't want to live with a wife and child in a shared home and be responsible for things and people and schedules--beyond my own." In your case, OP, the combination with the very grudging "I'll have kids if you want," this is all a marriage-killer. At least my friend's DH genuinely loved their kid emotionally. But your DH sounds like that aspect is not even present. Please don't get "oops!" pregnant with your DH but stop having sex now and get out. Better to be single and have a child on your own, probably. |
Anonymous
| Have 1 kid and stay in the city. You both win. suburban family life ain’t all that. I know a lot of moms like me who have lost our souls and personhoods here. Can’t wait for an empty nest and to move back to a city |
Anonymous
Disagree. Have the kids. You are already old and not enough time to find new guy and get it done. You may end up single mom, so it depends on which outcome sounds better — married to man child or single mom dating to find a new DH. I would go for kids. Having kids on your own is $$$$. As long as you don’t push child support he’ll give you custody, natch. |
Anonymous
Or maybe don’t have kids with someone who clearly doesn’t want them. Sometimes, it’s not about you and what YOU want. Why would you bring a child into a situation where one parent clearly doesn’t want them? That is selfish. |
Anonymous
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I was just going to post in response to OP’s comment about maturity - that it’s actually exceedingly mature to recognize one’s lack of desire for kids and be up front and open about it.
This world is full of selfish people and people doing what everyone else is doing without giving any actual considered thought to whether parenting is something they actually want and are actually up to the bar to perform in that role. The evidence of that selfish thoughtlessness is all around us, in the wreckage of so many lives that started in being born to reluctant or emotionally immature parents who are mired in their own problems and are never actually capable of bringing anything close to an A game to the role of parenting. Your husband has been courageous enough to be honest. If you cannot grasp the maturity in that, you have issues of your own and maybe you need to spend some time looking at those. |
Anonymous
| I don’t want a suburban life either! Seems so boring. I’d feel both isolated and claustrophobic all at the same time. |
Anonymous
having one parent love you is more than enough for a great life....nothing selfish about it....more selfish to deny a life to someone |
Anonymous
A great life after growing up with a parent who actively doesn’t want you? And maybe the sort who tells you that every day and acts in dozens of ways to undermine your belief that you deserve to exist? You seem to know very little about psychological trauma in childhood and the lifelong devastating effects of it in the lives of millions of adults struggling today. Being born to a single loving parent is one thing. If OP wants a kid, she’s better off having it that way then to have a child with a man who already knows he doesn’t want to be a father and may rise up to the significant challenges of parenting kids but becoming abusive to them. |
Anonymous
+1,000,000. |
Anonymous
This! At least seriously consider it. My DH sounds different from yours in some ways, but he was clear that he was ambivalent on kids and that his career would come first, but he knew I wanted kids so he was ok with it. He wasn't actively anti-kids or anything like that. We have 1 and it's worked out great. He does put his career first, and I've lost a bit of myself to motherhood, and having 2 would have been a disaster. We did do the suburban thing, and it's alright, but staying closer to the city would have pushed things from great to awesome. |
Anonymous
DP. I hope this post above is meant to be sarcastic because if not, it's terrible advice to OP. "He'll give you custody, natch"? Based on, what, his saying now that he doesn't want kids? He could be pi$$ed enough at OP leaving him that he'll demand at least some custody., just to get at her, and then do a cruddy job of parenting while he has them, or will be so checked out he'll ignore them on his watch. And even if he doesn't want custody, OP still remains yoked to him as long as they both live, through their kids. Unless she can guarantee 100 percent that he'll be her baby daddy then divorce her easily, pay ample child support, and move far, far away from her and their kids -- she is taking a huge risk with a plan to have kids then divorce and expect them to be all hers. He may decide that if he's paying child support he gets to butt in on how she wants to raise them, custody or not. OP would do better to leave now, freeze her eggs if she is intent on having bio kids, have them with a donor and be a single mom, or open her mind to the idea that one does not have to have kids to be a whole person, or can adopt (an option DCUM never likes to discuss, ever). And yes, having kids on your own "is $$$$," PP, but having kids with a divorced coparent can be nightmare or at least a headache. Not sure his $$$$ is worth that. |
Anonymous
| Op what if you had a kid but stayed in the city? It's hardly a necessity to move to the suburbs, if that's his main concern. |
Anonymous
This and another post talk about "losing" oneself to motherhood. If you and that other PP actually mean "I left my career track and wish I had not," I wish you'd both just come out and say that clearly. If you mean, "I realized I don't like the feeling I"m supposed to be on the PTA or hang with neighborhood moms," say so. If you know what you "lost," name it and figure out what you should be doing so you're not going around feeling lost in suburbia. It does not have to be that way. |
Anonymous
DP, not OP. If he were on board with having a child, he would want to pursue that and not equate having a child with living some stereotypical suburban life that probably only exists in his head and not in reality. I suspect that he added the "suburban life" lament as just another reason not to have a child he doesn't want anyway. "Fixing" his dislike of surburban life by staying in the city and still having a child will not alter the fact he simply doesn't want kids; he'll find another reason why having a child in the city won't work either, possibly. |