He wants kids, I don't....

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  • Monkey_Business
    Monkey_Business Posts: 1,800 Member
    First, let say I have not read any of the other responses yet, so this is going to be me and my own experience.

    I did my life completely backward and was told when I got married at eighteen my marriage would end in a divorce. I was a father at the age of eighteen. I went to college at the age of 41 and completed grad school three years later. My wife and I celebrated our 41 anniversary in July this year. So, it is fairly clear we made the right choices for us.

    My first born (daughter) is now 41 and l will be a first time grand-parent in October/November. She wanted college, grad school and to develop her career first before marriage and before children. I have to say she made the right choices for her.
    My wife and I and her and her husband are all at a point where we are really being able to have a lot fun through this experience. Money is not an issue, health care is not an issue, no strains from the work environment, no time off worries as we all have oodles of paid leave accumulated. It is a really happy, joyful and FUN experience for all of us.

    The point is; YOU need to decide what is best for YOU and your SO, not your family and not his. Get this clear real quick or it may lead to trouble later if not already. You are in a very competitive career field, any advantage you can get now maybe the one thing that puts you ahead of your peers.
  • castadiva
    castadiva Posts: 2,016 Member
    No one in his family ever went to college and none of them have a professional career (work in mills, factories, etc.) so I feel that none of them understand what I’m going through with trying to establish a satisfying career for myself.

    oh.

    Oh I'm sorry that working in factories is not considered professional. That sounded a little superficial . Be careful what you type because ppl could take offense to this comment.

    A 'profession' is traditionally held to be a field of work “where a first degree followed by a period of further study or professional training is the normal entry route” (Langlands 2005). Historically this essentially covered Law, Medicine, Accountancy, Engineering etc, but now covers a range of what might otherwise be called 'desk jobs' (plus some creative fields when used in a corporate environment, and Medicine, despite the amount of time doctors spend on their feet!). OP is using the term correctly. Many (though not all) factory jobs and other work that is predominantly based on manual labour, though honourable and excellent, do not fall into the 'professional' category under the traditional definition, so no offence is implied unless one chooses to try to find it. Just clarifying, since this seems to be a common cause of upset on this thread!
  • bantamspaul
    bantamspaul Posts: 77 Member
    Early days in our relationship my wife-to-be and I clarified our feelings about having kids and we moved ahead on that basis and have two teenagers now. My sister and the love of her life had a similar conversation a few years later and she wanted kids and he didn't. She felt she had to break up with him despite still being in love with him and did so. She found someone else, fell in love, married and now has three kids. He found someone else and is happily married without any offspring. I honestly think that this is a THE major issue in planning a life together and some frank discussion and hard decisions will flow from that.
  • Fullsterkur_woman
    Fullsterkur_woman Posts: 2,712 Member
    Early days in our relationship my wife-to-be and I clarified our feelings about having kids and we moved ahead on that basis and have two teenagers now. My sister and the love of her life had a similar conversation a few years later and she wanted kids and he didn't. She felt she had to break up with him despite still being in love with him and did so. She found someone else, fell in love, married and now has three kids. He found someone else and is happily married without any offspring. I honestly think that this is a THE major issue in planning a life together and some frank discussion and hard decisions will flow from that.
    Seriously. There may not be another decision more grave than this, apart from a split-second decision to take someone else's like in defense of your own or someone else's. We're talking about making people, for whom you will be ultimately responsible. Creating new beings and intelligent entities that have feelings and needs and individual identities. I can't imagine a more important decision. You can't take that on (or forego it) on a whim to go along with what someone else wants. Being in agreement on this point really seems to be a "sine qua non" for a LTR, the more I think about it.

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