Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He wants to have children with you. If that's not possible, he still wants to have children. If you are offended that he would not stay with you no matter what, consider if you are so committed to him that you would also stay no matter what.

I would not have broken up with a man who was infertile, but I did break up with men who expressly did not want to have children, because I did. It wasn't that they were not good guys. We just wanted different things.

Respectfully, you are missing the point. It's not about knowing up front that you don't want children. It's about what happens when your dreams together fall apart?

The man has made clear up front that marriage is not a forever thing to him. He will run when things get tough. It's not "for better or worse, in sickness and in health" for him. It's, I get what I want or I'm out of here. He is saying the the thing he values most in a mate is not the person, but the eggs and uterus to produce his offspring, and if the birth vessel he bought proves "defective," he'll dump her by the side of the road. OP is right to run away from that, because you need your spouse most during the "worse" and "sickness" parts of life that are inevitable. People become infertile: through illness, accidents, cancer treatments, etc. People can be infertile from birth and not know it and be devastated when they learn it. If the dude is telling you up front he won't be there for that, that he will dump you when you need him most -- run.

Marriage (to many) is a lifetime partnership between two people, come what may, for better or worse. Worse happens, and it is not meant to be an "out" becasue it isn't what you'd dreamed of.

Anonymous wrote:He wants to have children with you. If that's not possible, he still wants to have children. If you are offended that he would not stay with you no matter what, consider if you are so committed to him that you would also stay no matter what.

I would not have broken up with a man who was infertile, but I did break up with men who expressly did not want to have children, because I did. It wasn't that they were not good guys. We just wanted different things.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Preserve optionality ... by leaving him and "moving on"?

When you leave, the relationship is not "preserved," PP. It's "no longer existing."

Keep up. She wants him to stay with her while she gets to kick the can on whether she wants to actually have kids or not.

Anonymous wrote:This thread has gotten super weird with some random incel dominating the last 10+ pages.

There is no double-standard. A woman who would leave a man when she discovered male-factor infertility would be similarly derided as cruel and selfish. They could do IVF, sperm donation, embryo adoption, or adoption if they both desperately wanted kids.

Anonymous wrote:
Preserve optionality ... by leaving him and "moving on"?

When you leave, the relationship is not "preserved," PP. It's "no longer existing."

Anonymous wrote:For a forum that has had countless threads about men "wasting" women's fertility by not committing to kids, this is a quite the switch-a-roo.