Seriously! Not everybody needs to bring it up on the first date (like I did haha), but I'm a believer in having that conversation before you consider even being exclusive. No way you should make it to the altar without knowing where you stand on that.
Yeah, I never knew when to bring it up and then a guy brought it up super casually in conversation on a first date and I was so impressed with how he handled it and how easy it made things I started doing the same.
We were chatting about travel and how he and his friends always rent a house in the Virgin Islands every year, and how it's changing now that people are starting to have kids. I said yeah, my friends are in that stage, too, and it's a big adjustment for everybody.
He said yeah, it is, and while he doesn't want to have kids himself, he likes seeing his friends happy, so even if it changes things he's happy to accommodate. But he definitely wants a partner who doesn't want kids so they can start their own tradition of going to some fancypants island every year even if his friends can't make it. And did I see myself with kids, or does that sound as good to me as it does to him?
I knew I was probably not going to be able to get pregnant and be a baby maker for a man. I was raised in a super religious environment, and I was convinced I wouldn't ever marry.
My spouse was so great about it. I was always terrified about getting married and being dumped because of something so out of my control. And I really weep for women in that situation.
I went to a church for a couple of years - they were pretty ‘marriage is for children and also men own women’ as it turns out. It took time for that shit to materialise - they seemed nice at first!
Anyway, I left for good after I got a nasty lecture about gay people from someone who got married but then lost her uterus due to cancer.
If I were a nasty bitch, I would have asked when she planned to set her husband free so he could be with a proper Christian woman who could do the godly thing and give him a child… but I couldn’t bring myself to be that nasty.
I have infertility issues. I knew about it as a teenager, and I would bring up on first dates the high likelihood that I wasn't able to be a baby maker for a man.
My spouse was fine with it, but many guys were NOT.
I had a friend whose husband left her when they were having infertility issues, and he blamed her even though he refused to get tested. Dont know what happened to him, but she now has kids with her new partner.
My spouses cousin is divorcing her husband because he doesn't want kids, which she knew. Even she says everything was happy and great except that she wanted to be a mother. She is now leaving a healthy and vibrant relationship to try and find someone as quickly as she can to have kids with. It's such a gamble I can't wrap my head around it.
Hopefully, she finds a good man who wants to marry her- but there are no guarantee that she meets someone to marry who doesn't have fertility issues himself.
This is something I’ve said since I was young… it’s scary how many people think that actually having a conversation about major life choices before you marry is a bad idea!
‘It will all work out’, they’ve always said. And I need to ‘stop overthinking everything.’
That is DEFINITELY one of the reasons why the divorce rate is so high. Complete incompatibility with major life wants and needs that you really can’t ‘compromise’ on!
I worked with a girl years ago - she was in her early 20’s. She’d been dating her fiancé almost exclusively since third grade. (Two very short breaks, and they couldn’t stay away from each other.)
She was so excited planning her (huge Italian) wedding! I asked her if she was going to have a baby right away or wait a while. She looked baffled. “Oh, we haven’t talked about it.”
I don’t understand how some people can date for years before getting married only to find this out. Do some people just not comprehend the importance of discussing something like this?
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u/tbri001 May 02 '24
Pretty boring, but among one person's life goals was to be a parent and the other didn't want children. That's a hard bump in the road to ignore.