Admin- When we started dating eight years ago, my now wife said she didn’t want children.
- I wanted to have children, but I chose to focus on our relationship and it paid off.
- We enjoy our child-free marriage and have dogs that we put sweaters on.
When entering into a relationship, the subject of children will come up at some point. And in certain situations, one person is not interested in bringing children into his life. That’s exactly what happened to my wife and me.
Eight years ago we started our journey together and the inevitable conversation found its way into our lives. I wanted to have a child, but she didn’t. This could have stagnated our budding romance, but instead it strengthened it. Here’s how we made it work then and how we can still make it work.
Communication is key
If we hadn’t communicated early on what our plans were for our future, we would have setting ourselves up for failure by expecting our idealized family portrait of each other.
I’ve seen it too many times in new relationships where couples are in love with each other, but never talk about the difficult topics that can make or break their future. Before you know it, they’ve broken up because one of them loves kids and the other is completely against it. We didn’t want that to happen with our love story.
I said I wanted a child within weeks of us getting together. I said it knowing that it would be a heavy and controversial topic if we were not careful and thoughtful. She said she didn’t. She was in her late forties and traveled a lot for work. Bringing a child into our relationship was a hard no for her. It was then up to me to decide if I wanted a child more than I wanted to continue loving her.
I took the risk and it paid off in interest.
I made a conscious decision to give up motherhood someone I fell madly in love with. We still talk about kids, but these conversations look different now as we navigate a lifetime of experiences we wouldn’t have had we had children.
She knows I don’t hold her responsible for my empty womb. And I am proud of her for remaining steadfast in her beliefs, knowing the burden she would usually leave me with.
Our commitment to communication and our happiness with everything we have been blessed with without a child are major reasons why we are childfree and still happily married.
We both needed emotional maturity
No form of communication would be successful without emotional maturity. If we couldn’t start from love and understanding, we would only end up in arguments. A solid foundation, built on honoring but controlling our feelings, meant that none of our conversations about children would end in arguments. My wife was not responsible for me not having a child.
I recently found out through the popular ancestry website that an egg donation I made in my twenties resulted in a successful pregnancy. There’s a 10-year-old boy somewhere right now with pieces of me woven into the fabric of his existence.
When I made this discovery, my wife held my hand and we talked about our feelings. I wasn’t sure what I was feeling, but she felt worried. That was understandable: she decided herself that she didn’t want children, but a child could come out of the woodwork looking for me. She didn’t sign up for that.
I empathized with her feelings while still respecting my exploration of what was moving in my heart. And no fighting took place because of this discovery out of left field. We met each other with love and continue to process this news together.
Without a solid foundation of emotional maturity, our house of love would have been just a house of conflicting, negative emotions. And without complete honesty in our communications, our house would have been a house of facades, ready to fall apart the first time I said, “I want a child.”
Instead, we have no regrets. And we continue to enjoy our very successful child-free marriage, full of experiences, laughter, love and dogs that we put in sweaters.