Need Help Grieving (adopted adult, step-parenting, and childless not by choice)
My wife has a stepdaughter that I came into her life late, so I am not seen as a father figure to her. At any moment my wife could leave me and the family I got from her would disappear. I was adopted by a single parent who had no extended family. After 3 years of relationship that had its standard and non-standard hurdles, we were really good. So, I was thinking next steps, thought back to our dreams about children, and about a year ago, proposed us having them. I got an immediate neutral "no, and if you need that, we need to break up and you need to go find someone else to do that with". I was shocked and asked why she was now against them and she said flirted with the idea before, but ultimately changed her mind about not wanting them. Even adoption was not really an option for her... And I thought it would be and was ready to deconstruct with her for as long as it needed my own issues with adoption being adopted and how I was leaning more towards biological children that she previously said she enjoyed giving birth to her child... yet we weren't even going to start the adoption conversation...
So for the last year started with non-stop fights that just got worse and worse. Then I started to lie to myself and to her that I didn't want children anymore to stop the relationship issues, but by that point she wanted me to heal the wounds in the relationship caused by the fighting about children, which I couldn't do because I still wanted children (and my saying I didn't want them wasn't the band-aid she wanted on the wound). I then kind of crazily started to do seemingly subconscious distractive activities like maneuver my way into a high paying socially respectable profession, get in the best shape of my life, and try to become a person who was perfect and not criticizable (and if I was I would debate my wife about the criticism).
This ultimately drove me fairly nuts, I got really detached from myself. I started to take it out on my partner because I wasn't happy and was lying to myself. I would just get really angry all the time about any moment I thought she was potentially rejecting me. This just got worse, until recently, when I realized that I do still want children and that I just never grieved a year ago when I was told "no" and this "no" hasn't changed.
I now am in a tough place that I still love my wife and her stepdaughter, but I have to grieve on my own. My wife is more interested, understandably, in seeing if we can go a week without a big fight than appease my pain around children (which I understand is ultimately a threat to her because I might leave).
And I am definitely still in the denial, bargaining, and anger phases of grief. I keep lying to myself (denial) that if I just am perfect enough, she will want to have children with me, and soon enough before she can longer have them. I then have been angry, yet I am trying to not take that out on my wife anymore. Then the bargaining has been very troublesome this week. I am awful at flirting and never notice it happening, but younger women have been definitely flirting with me and well, I have been flirting back. Literally leaving the exchanges with the thought that maybe I should have an affair and see if I can get them pregnant and if they will keep the kid (and want to raise it with me).
I also have had the thought that my bisexual wife would be open to a polyamorous relationship where we would bring in a third bisexual female partner who does want to have children, that we would all raise together, but primarily me and the new partner. However, this definitely would confuse my wife's teenage child and I don't believe my wife would say yes to this scenario... And if she did somehow and somehow we could do this, I have no idea where I would find someone interested in doing such a thing.
So all this denial and bargaining is because at the end of the day I want a big family, I don't want to be alone, and I also love my wife and think she is the most amazing person I have ever met. I want to take care of her for the rest of my life, but I also want children, her child is not my child (and I don't expect anything like that of her) and my relationship with her is totally predicated on whether her mother is still with me...
Perhaps I am a bit crazy about all of this, but I would love to get help and help others grieving through similar things.
Having children was the best
Having children was the best thing that I was ever able to do. I made a mistake in my first marriage though. I knew from the time I was a young child that being a Mom was something I wanted. When my exH and I got serious I talked about wanting kids A LOT. When we got engaged I wanted to start trying. He wanted to wait. So we waited and waited. Then when he reached the rank he thought would be financially stable enough to have a child and me stay at home, I pretty much demanded we have a baby now. He didn't want to. I said baby or I am out. We had 2 kids (after a few years and a lot of fertility issues).
I will never forget the sentance that fully ended our marriage. He was laying in bed and said "I love our kids, but I hate that they exisist, I wish we never had them." -- we were having other issues but that was the nail in the coffin for me.
My point is, you can't force someone who doesn't want kids to have them. They will be miserable. On the other side, I would take being a single parent every single day vs. not having my kids. Maybe you do need to leave and either find another person who wants to have kids- there are plenty around!- or do what your parent did and adopt and be a dad.
My issues is this... I love
My issues is this... I love my wife. In my head, genuinely, I wanted to have children with her. I was so overtaken by my wife when I first met her, I haven't really left her side for 3.5 years, I dropped everything to be with her.
That said, I am scared to truly consider finding someone else. I may regret later leaving to find someone to have children with and never find that. And to find someone to have children with that I would think would make a great co-parent with me. I think my wife is a great mother, I have seen how she has raised her child, and I want that with her. I wish I just met her a lot earlier and in many ways am angry that I am younger than her. If I was older, I could have met her before she met my stepchild's father and could have done that with her, and not him. I am better than him too on every level, so it is just really irritating. And my wife was super young when she had a kid with this guy, so I don't blame her for not knowing she could have had better, and well I was 14 years old when she had her daughter (haha). So I couldn't have competed, even though she was actually in my area at the time at college (she lives in the South, but has come up North to the city I met her in twice for school).
This is all grieving and I am happy to not do it fully alone. I have a therapist now which is good and I have this online community.
I'm so sorry you are going
I'm so sorry you are going through this. Could you adopt a child of your own?
This is a good idea kind of?
This is a good idea kind of? I didn't think of that...
Might be easier than trying to bring in another woman into the relationship!
Still, this might be a tough one if my partner is like "well if you need to do that, I don't need to do that, so this will be complicated". And she ultimately will say no and see it understandably as a passive-aggressive way to get what I want without having to deal with her anymore.
I thought I replied to this?
I thought I replied to this? But this could be a good idea (and easier than bringing another woman into the relationship) if my partner wouldn't understandably think this was a passive-aggressive way of just getting what I want without including her anymore.
I also wanted to say that you
I also wanted to say that you have to follow your heart. If your heart is not fulfilled, it will always be difficult no matter how hard you try to shove things to the back, or no matter how much you forgive. Sounds like your wife's heart needs you to heal the hurt that was caused. Sadly, Both of you are being pretty direct about what you both need from each other to be fulfilled but neither are able to give each other what the other wants. It is a travesty isn't it.
Yes, I want to finalize the
Yes, I want to finalize the conversation around children and she now just wants to see if we can go for a couple days at a time without getting angry at each other. And well, we are both getting older and feel like I need a plan? A therapist told me to wait a couple years and see if I can rebuild the relationship, and then see if the child conversation might come up again or a conversation about the biggest existential problems of life, and see if we can fulfill each other about them, but at that point my partner will be perhaps definitely too old to want another kid or really anything I feel I may want, like to move to another country together (something big and meaningful). We just cannot dream and plan on those dreams anymore.
And really, a major issue is that she feels hurt that she is not enough if she doesn't give me a child, especially when I say I thought she wanted biological children with me, and that made me feel really acknowledged in our relationship... She now says it is offensive that I cannot love her if she doesn't let me do damage to her body via pregnancy...
And thank you for the reply!
She was pretty quick to
She was pretty quick to suggest you move on if that's what you wanted/needed... wow
Anyway... is having a bio-child something you need? Only you can answer that question... and if the answer is yes, you absolutely should move on... you don't want to live a life of regret.
Well what is tough is that
Well what is tough is that she is affirmative in her no's, but when pushed, she will say "I thought I wanted it at this or that point" and then I think "then what do I need to do to get you back to that point?"
If she always said "no" then this would be on me, but she once was thinking about it...? And her reasons for not having children in the past were more like her philosophically discussing whether the world was too bad now to bring more children into, not "I do not want to have children with you" and I thought these moments (there were two distinct conversations when we first started dating, before we even wanted children together and one later, after a lot of relationship difficulties) were just debates we were having with each other, but she goes back to those as the moments I should have realized she was giving me an affirmative "no". And my thing now is, if the world is so bad we cannot bring children into it, why are we living the life we are living? We just bought a house and are working on building up each other's careers? We are living as if we are going to have children... Otherwise we are just living in a suburban home not doing anything...?
Hey all, I really appreciate
Hey all, I really appreciate your help. I am just on day one of grieving. I am still bargaining and trying to understand if I actually want children and trying to understand why my partner changed her mind about them. This is literally the extent our conversations go now that she just says "sorry, I changed my mind". And yeah, right now she wants to work on rebuilding the relationship and is either done with or doesn't want to deal with the child conversation for a long time and time is ticking.
I think you need to see a
I think you need to see a therapist on your own, separate from your wife, who can help you work through this.
Ultimately, her answer is no. She was quick to say no, which means she is probably fairly confident in her answer. That has nothing to do with you. She is just done with children, for whatever reason. If you want to have kids, you'll have to leave this relationship to have them.
Yes, I said leave. Not adopt on your own and stay. Not add a third partner (I'll come back to that). Leave.
Regarding bisexuality and polyamory...oh boy. Unless she has told you that she wants another partner, or unless you truly want to live in a polyamorous relationship, the assumption that she would consider it just because she is bisexual is extremely inconsiderate. These two things are entirely different from one another, and while there is overlap between the communities, it is not mutually exclusive. In addition to finding out what you want, if you decide to stay, I think you need to gain a better understanding of your wife's sexuality versus using it as a means to your end. Even if she and you decided to have a poly relationship, don't use another person as your surrogate for the thing your wife won't give you. That is truly the epitome of using someone, and not only will you have a hard time finding someone who is willing to do it, but you'll lose them once they realize they were nothing more than an incubator and marital loophole.
I know you are grieving. I have been there myself with my XH. However, your wife cannot fix this for you. Your only real choices are to stay, in which case you HAVE to get over this far more quickly than you currently are and actually heal from it, or leave. Find a therapist and quickly (as in, before the end of the year) determine what you want. The longer this drags out, the more likely that your wife will make the decisions for you.
You will resent staying
Having children was a deal breaker in my marriage. I wanted them. He agreed. We did two rounds of IVF. I miscarried both times. He told me later that he never actually wanted more children. He also didn't want to adopt. I was devastated. I had to grieve the loss of being a mother. I decided that I would stay with him. It didn't last long. I was extremely resentful. I gave up what I wanted in my marriage so that he could have what HE wanted, which was no more children. I loved him more than anything. It wasn't enough. We divorced.
Everyone on this board will agree that step children are NOT a substitute for bio children, ESPECIALLY when you want a bio child.
Its been five years since we separated (and subsequently divorced). I have grieved the loss of ever having biological children. I explored adoption on my own for a couple of years but decided that it wasn't for me. I'm okay now with not having bio children.
I'm now with the most amazing man. I can honestly look back and not regret leaving my ex.
She is allowed to NOT want kids. You are allowed to want them. She won't change her mind. If you stay you will be miserable and forever resentful. You say you love her but the two of you fight all the time. That is exactly what went on in my marriage. We fought....a lot. We were both miserable in the end (we'll througout most of the marriage, but I digress)
If you leave, you have a chance...A CHANCE to be the parent you want to be.