You could try to genuinely listen to what he has to say. He sounds like he fears another child will ruin his life. If eh had a guarantee that another child would not do that, would he then want another one? In other words, is he basing the decision on fear or genuine preference? If it's the former, panning carefully may help. If it's the latter, you need to respect that and find a way to deal with your own emotions.

If your desire for a second kid is greater than your desire to have a healthy marriage, but all means find some way to get it.
But it likely will lead to divorce or a miserable husband stuck in a miserable marriage.

Your choice.

YOLO...is this what you want? It’s hard to know. I’ve been there OP. DH was on the fence “ok”’with one, but he knew I wanted a “big family” when we were dating. So, it’s really not fair to say that it’s all on me to compromise. He had a very rocky start with entry to fatherhood. I was right where you are now, of family members asking when, when other family who had their first after us, already had their second. I did have jealous thoughts. I even posted a thread or two on here about it all as I was working through different stages.

I highly recommend counseling for yourself to get to the root of what is going on for you. For how to better talk to DH about this marriage issue. (Not to convince him.) You deserve to also be heard and validated in your thoughts on the matter and the place you are currently in sounds like a stand off. That isn’t a happy or healthy place for your marriage to be.

We genuinely had an “oops”’baby six years after the first. It was important to me to have his “buy in” to the pregnancy and may have broken our marriage if he had said no. We had really hard thoughtful conversations about it, and once he was in, he was able to be all in. We revisited his own fears and failings and mine too from the first go around and now we are both so in love with our second child. He still maintains that he doesn’t want any more and is eventually going to get a vasectomy. But we are both happy for the family we have.

I share to give an example of one family working through it. Good luck to you.

Anonymous wrote:Anything you can do?
Believe your husband when he says he does not want another child.

And work on your own feelings of jealousy and tell the relatives to butt out.

You can tell him what you wrote here. Are you the one using birth control? I would tell him I am stopping my birth control and it is now up to him to use condoms or schedule a vasectomy.

Divorce him. Find someone else and have more kids. Problem solved.

Anonymous wrote:No means no. Respect your husband’s decision. Neither of you know for sure what the perfect size is. If you wish to push him, be aware your perfect size might be 3 +1 when you live with two kids and he hits the road!

Agree with this. I don’t get people who aren’t on the same page about kids or no kids or amount of kids when they get married.

Good luck op.

Stay with him and don’t have a second. PPs are right that you shouldn’t force it on him. Or, you could leave him and have a second. Not a whole lot in between if he really doesn’t want another.

You can change ur mind about kids. I certainly did. Just bc you felt like it would be ok to have none or one when you married him doesn’t mean you’re wrong for feeling differently now. Sorry you’re not aligned on this. I do know the desire for a second can be incredibly intense. Anger at your circumstances is probably inevitable, but your DH is also not wrong for not wanting more kids.

Anonymous wrote:why did you marry this selfish crazy asshole?

what can you do? if you are using birth control stop. tell his family the truth so they will work on it.

You can’t be serious. If you are, I wish all the evil karma on you that you deserve.

why did you marry this selfish crazy asshole?

what can you do? if you are using birth control stop. tell his family the truth so they will work on it.

DH did not want a second child and I really did. Now that it’s too late he wonders if we should have had a second child. You have to let it go and try to appreciate what you have. Tell his family to direct all inquiries to your DH.

No means no. Respect your husband’s decision. Neither of you know for sure what the perfect size is. If you wish to push him, be aware your perfect size might be 3 +1 when you live with two kids and he hits the road!

How much autonomy should adults have? I’ve wondered in these situations if what to me would be a core denial of my desire to have children was supposedly blocked by my husband would agreeing to sever (in this case) finances work? If he wanted to stay married-be a parent to one-could someone who wanted more children do donor sperm/egg/even surrogate? I’d say OP went into marriage knowing DH reluctance for any children but ‘compromised’ at one entered a different course than promised at outset but when we married we agreed to kids but I then felt need for 4th-to point of it feeling like a physical pain. I’d have felt robbed if my DH hadn’t finally agreed. (And once he said yes DH was 1000% all in for DS.) My hindsight is I had no idea until I did that I would want a different number of children than my DH and while I understand why there’s an argument weighting the NO higher-in my heart of hearts I’d counsel a friend-man or woman-to examine what cost is being extracted by that fairness and maybe the marriage would be one to leave behind.

Anonymous wrote:You married a person expecting to change him. He gave into your pestering, and now you want to change him even more. You're the one with the issue.

This
This
This

How will you feel if you have another child and he resents it and you forever? He has his reasons and told you this before you got married. Honestly you should not have married someone who felt like this about something. This is not something you meet in the middle on or compromise on.