Don't hide your childless tears from your partner

"My god, I cried and cried reading your post as I sit here in the dark outside grieving for what will never be. I love my partner and I hate him a little too because he doesn't want children and I am left bound by that decision. I feel my time running out and wish every single day he would change his mind but he is unwavering in his decision. And at the same time I can barely acknowledge this pain and grief to myself because I am terrified of it consuming me. This is the first time I have ever really sat down and let it all wash over me. I can't stop crying. I don't know how I am going to walk inside and pretend I'm okay because he doesn't understand."

One of my earliest posts, "Are Your Grieving Over Your Lack of Children," published Nov. 7, 2007, still draws more comments than any other. The comment above is the most recent. It brings back memories for me. I too hid my grief from my husband. I cried in the bathtub, in the car, or in the garage, but not in front of Fred. Oh no. Mustn't make him feel bad or risk making him mad. But looking back, I think that was wrong. I should have showed how I felt instead of hiding my feelings and hoping some kind of miracle would occur.

I am also bothered by her statement, "I am left bound by that decision." Is she? It's so hard to see a situation clearly when we're in the middle of it. We can't see any way out, we think we have no options, but we do. To Anonymous, I say reopen the conversation. You can agree to disagree, but don't hide your feelings. They count as much as his.

I don't cry all the time anymore. Sometimes I just curse and kick things, but when you're at the time of life when you see your chances of parenthood disappearing with every passing day, it hurts like hell. Losing your chance to have children is a big loss, and we don't need to hide it. If people don't like it, too bad.

I'd love to hear your comments.

Are you afraid to demand what you need?

Dear readers,

Happy New Year! I suspect that you're as glad as I am that the holidays are finally over and we can get back to normal. The holidays build up so many expectations which usually result in disappointment. Right? So, let's just move on.

I have decided to feature some of the comments I receive here on the blog from time to time. They often come on old posts that you might not see. One of the posts that draws the most comments is "If You Disagree About Children, Is Your Relationship Doomed?" from Jan. 4, 2013. Most readers can't answer the question, but they're hoping somebody else can. Check out this comment from Miranda:

I'm 30 he's 38. He has seven yes 7 kids from previous relationships. Ages 10-22... We've been together just under ten years. We finally got married in 2014. I had been so excited to finally have the wedding and then his mother died the week of the wedding unexpectedly. They used our reception hall the day after the wedding for the funeral. :-( the week after the wedding I collapsed and a CT scan showed a tumor, a rare fibroid in my uterus causing chaos in my body and also not allowing an egg to ever attach. It's going to be removed next month. Up until this year I loved kids but my bio clock wasn't ticking or anything. Now it's ticking. Up until now he said he wasn't getting a vasectomy because it wouldn't be fair to expect me to help raise all his kids and then tell me I can't have one. Except that's exactly what's happening. He doesn't want more kids. He's worn out. He will have another but not because he wants to. It's a totally different story to raise other people's kids. His youngest is ten and We've had full custody since he was two. It's still not the same. I want my own child. I won't leave over this matter but I'm heartbroken. It seems like everything I've ever looked forward to is being destroyed. I can't feasibly get pregnant and feel good about it if it's just going to chase him off because he's tired of kids. I doubt he'd leave but I don't want to do it alone either.. 

Seven kids and he can't handle one more? Now he's getting a vasectomy? My reaction is that she should insist on having the child. It's not fair to say yes and then say no, especially in a situation where the woman has only a short time to get pregnant. I know all the reasons why it might not work, but the thing is, I think too often we're afraid to demand what we need, to say, "I want a baby, and we're going to have one." We're afraid it will destroy the relationship, that our mate will resent us, that he won't love the baby. But we might be mistaken about that. We're afraid to even mention it for fear he or she will get upset. I suggest that we all make 2015 the year we speak up for our needs. If it goes bad, it goes bad, but at least we didn't suffer in silence.

What do you think? I'd love to hear your comments. I'm sure Miranda would like more opinions than mine.

Beware of unreasonable baby expectations

* She’s 46, he’s 36, and he wants to have children, preferably several. But she’s 46, past the age when most women can get pregnant without heavy medical intervention, and she has almost finished raising the daughter she had with her first husband.

* He’s going through a divorce that nearly destroyed him emotionally and financially. His two half-grown kids are breaking his heart. And now his girlfriend is badgering him to get married and have children. She won’t stop talking about it when he barely has the energy to get through his day as it is.

* Before they got married, he said he didn’t want to have any children. She said kids were never a priority for her either. But then a couple years into their marriage, she saw all her friends having babies and started wanting one, too. When she mentioned her new desire to her husband, he told her he still had no desire to have children. Now she is certain she must become a mother or die of grief. It’s all his fault for denying her this essential part of life. But he told her all along that fatherhood was not on his bucket list.

Dear friends, I read stories like this almost every day in blog comments and in private emails readers send to me. Most of the writers are heartbroken and struggling to figure out what to do. Should they leave their partner in the hope of finding someone eager to make babies or stay and risk ending up alone and regretful in old age? I sympathize. I really do. When I married Fred, I was 33, and he was 48. He had three children from his first marriage and he’d had a vasectomy. We talked about having the vasectomy reversed. We talked about adoption. But he finally told me he just did not want any more kids. I wanted babies. I cried over it, I drank over it, I got mad over it, and I fantasized that somehow I’d get pregnant anyway. Of course I didn’t.

Like the readers described above, I had unreasonable expectations. I married an older man who had already done the baby thing. He had barely finished his divorce before our wedding day. His kids were in all kinds of trouble. His financial security had just been demolished. Finding and falling in love with each other was like a gift from God. To demand children on top of that was asking too much. If I really wanted kids, I should have found a man my own age who was aching to be a dad. I chose Fred.

Readers, I know how much it hurts not having the babies you always wanted. I still cry over it.  It kills me to see families with their children and grandchildren and realize I’m alone. Add active hormones and people having babies all around you, and it can be brutally hard walking around with an empty womb. It’s hard to see clearly when you’re in the thick of it. But sometimes you have to be realistic. If you really love someone, consider their side of the situation. Instead of browbeating them, love them and do your best to understand.

Say the serenity prayer. It helps: God, please grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

I welcome your comments.

Can a magic spell end your childless woes?

My life was a disaster. My husband didn’t love me. He would not give me children. I was unable to conceive. We were headed for divorce. And then I met Dr. X, a spellcaster. In no time, our problems were solved. Now we have a happy loving family with three children, and I owe it all to Dr. X.

Crazy? Perhaps. But I get one or more of these comments almost every day. You don’t see them because I mark them as spam and get rid of them. They are spam, right? Usually the grammar errors and unnatural language give them away as not having been written by real people. But some of these comments sound so logical that I’m tempted to publish them. What if they were real?

If somebody offered you a magic spell that would solve your problems with your partner and enable you to have all the children you wanted, wouldn’t you try it? Don’t we all wish someone would wave a magic wand and take all of our troubles away?

When I was still fertile, there were times I hoped to become magically pregnant, despite birth control and reluctant husbands, but it didn't happen. The Virgin Mary is the only one who got pregnant without sperm meeting egg. As a Christian, the closest I can get is asking God for a miracle. Is that the same thing? I can hear God up in heaven echoing what my mother used to say: “I don’t do miracles on demand. Figure it out yourself.”

The truth is, we have to work out our own lives. Instead of a magic spell, we have to do the work to make our dreams come true. Sometimes that means making the difficult decision to leave someone we love. Sometimes it means staying with that person even if we disagree on important issues, like children, and loving them anyway. Sometimes it means talking out a resolution, even though the hardest thing in the world is talking about it. And sometimes it means looking around and realizing that you are surrounded by wonderful children you can love, even though you didn’t give birth to them and even though it hurts sometimes.

If only someone could cast a magic spell and fix all our problems. Do you believe it’s possible? What would you ask for if you could? And what miracles can you work all by yourself?

Should you gamble on a partner who says he or she doesn't want children?

Back in my grandmother's day, things were pretty simple. You grew up, got married and had babies. Period. No birth control. No legal abortions. No vasectomies or tube-tieing. The only people who didn't have children, aside from priests and nuns, were the ones who were physically unable. And everyone pitied them. "Oh poor Aunt Martha, she couldn't have children."

There was no choice, no changing of minds, no "do you want to have children?" "Let's wait until we have more money" or "I don't think I want to have children." People just had babies, and if it made their lives more difficult, if taking care of the kids meant sacrificing something else you would have liked to do, tough.

Sometimes I wish we were still back in those days. With all the sex my first husband and I had, I'd have at least three children now, maybe more because we might not have gotten divorced. I'd still be attached to a husband who drank too much and didn't believe in monogamy. Instead, we split up, and I married Fred, who was the best husband ever, except for not wanting to have children with me. Did it turn out for the best? I think so.

Every day I receive comments from readers struggling with the baby question. In many cases, they and their partners completely agreed when they got together about having or not having children. Then either one of them changed their minds or one of them proved to be unable to make babies. And now they don't know what to do. They're broken-hearted. They're talking about breaking up, but they're still in love and don't know if they'll ever find a better mate. I don't know what to tell them. Things happen. People turn out to be infertile. People who said they didn't care about having children suddenly realize that they can't bear living their entire lives without experiencing motherhood or fatherhood. People who thought they wanted children discover they really don't.

What it comes down to, I think, is making a commitment to another person and sticking to it, no matter what. Relationships are a gamble. Marriage is a gamble. He/she might die, might get sick, might get fired, might not be able to get pregnant, might decide he'd rather have a puppy. People change their minds. If you truly love that person, you don't leave when things get tough. You talk it through and find the best solution for both of you. When it comes to having children, if one wants them and one doesn't, somebody's going to get hurt. So the question it always comes down to is: Is this person worth taking a chance?

What do you think? Please post your comments. I'm running out of answers. 

Annulment offers comfort in childless divorce

Is a marriage doomed if one partner wants children and the other doesn’t? That’s the question we talked about in last week’s blog. I want to pursue the subject a little farther.

As most of you know, I was married twice. The first marriage ended in divorce, and my second husband died in 2011. I didn’t have children with either husband.

My first husband never said anything about not wanting children until well into the marriage. As we prepared for marriage in the Catholic church, we signed papers saying we would welcome children. But once we were married, he kept saying, “Not yet.” Then, when I thought I might be pregnant, he showed his true colors. “If you're pregnant, I’m leaving,” he told me. Well, I wasn’t pregnant, and the marriage fell apart about a year later for other reasons. About six months after the divorce, I filed for an annulment in the Catholic church. That annulment was granted on the grounds that my ex refused to have children with me. In the eyes of the church, it was not a valid marriage.

The annulment process was relatively easy compared to the divorce. I paid $300 and submitted written testimony, backed up with testimony from my parents and my brother, gave it all to my priest and eventually received a letter in the mail from the archdiocesan tribunal in San Francisco giving me the verdict. My ex was given the opportunity to give his side of the story, but he declined. I shed a few tears when I saw our full real names in that letter saying our marriage was invalid, but now I was free to marry again. The annulment process gave me validation that my desire to have children was right and good, that I did not have to suffer for my husband’s sin.

So now I could start over. I could marry someone else and have children. But it didn’t work out that way. My second husband, Fred, told me up front that the three kids he had from his first marriage were enough. He had had a vasectomy because he didn’t want to have any more babies. Although I suffered from a bit of denial—surely a miracle will happen and I’ll still have kids—I married him. He was not Catholic, and because he was divorced, we were not allowed to get married in the Catholic Church. There would be no annulment to rescue me if I regretted my choice.

Over the years, I often wished I could have children, but I never wanted to trade Fred for someone else. I didn’t have children with him, but I did get the support I needed to pursue my writing and music, and I did become a stepmother to his three children. He loved me like no one had ever loved me. Those are important things, huge gifts. He gave me a wonderful life. There was no breach of promise with Fred. No surprise.

In reading comments from men and women who declare themselves childfree, I find that many would end a relationship if their loved one wanted children. To them, it is worse to be saddled with an unwanted child than to lose their partner or spouse. What if Fred had said, “You want babies, so we’re going to have to break up?” Or if I had said, “Sorry, I’m going to look for somebody else.” What a loss that would have been for both of us.

What if my first husband had been honest about not wanting children? Our relationship was always troubled. But would I have had the sense to go find someone else? I was only 20 when we met. My whole life could have been different. But I wouldn’t have met Fred.

We don’t know what this life is going to bring, but when God sends us someone wonderful, should we send them away?

I would love to hear your thoughts.  

"I'm Never Going to Be a Mother"

Can you say "I'm never going to be a mother?" Calmly? Without tears? You're a stronger woman than I am.

Back when Fred and I were engaged but not yet married, he told me on a camping trip that he really didn't want to have any more children. I was upset, but I never really accepted the situation as permanent, and I married him anyway. As I say in my Childless by Marriage book,

"Despite Fred's declaration in the woods, I honestly believed that somehow I would still have children. But how did I expect that to happen? Immaculate conception? One stubborn sperm that survived the vasectomy? I was 50 before I could say, 'I am never going to be a mother' and mean it. I have asked dozens of childless women if they could say it out loud. Most had no problem with it. But just as I delude myself that I can lose weight while eating muffins for breakfast every morning, I held on to the idea that I might still have a baby."

Crazy? Perhaps. When it began to dawn on me that it really might never happen, I felt sorry for myself, as if this terrible fate had been placed upon me. It took a long time to understand that I consciously married a man who neither wanted nor was able to make me pregnant. That situation was not going to change. I chose Fred over children.

So, I am never going to be a mother.

How about you? Can you say this? Do you foresee being able to say it? If not and there's still time, you may need to take drastic steps to make it happen.

Tasty tidbits about childlessness

Today I'm heading off to play music at a funeral and then to a church picnic, so I'm sharing some tasty links you may want to check out.

"Dear Mariella," a columnist at in the UK's Guardian newspaper, tackles the problem of a wife wanting kids and a husband who doesn't at http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/jul/15/mariella-frostrup-woman-wants-children-husband-does-not.

Here's another one from the Guardian, "Why Japan Prefers Pets to Parenthood". Show of hands, how many of us couldn't get our mates to have children but had no problem getting him/her to accept a dog or cat?

"Childless or Childfree?" The notmom.com tackles this never-ending debate at http://thenotmom.com/childless-or-childfree.

Finally, does fatherhood make men happier? "Dads are happier than their childless peers" discusses that question. http://news.discovery.com/human/why-are-dads-so-happy120617.html

Your thoughts are welcome.

Happy weekend!

Why didn't I ever think of this?

It's Holy Week and we're crazy busy at my church, where I co-lead the choirs. We have services every night. After the Holy Thursday Mass yesterday, we were invited to stay and meditate, somewhat like Jesus' invitation to the disciples to stay with him in the garden of Gethsemane after the Last Supper. While I sat there, breathing incense and staring at Jesus on the cross, I thought about a conversation that took place earlier in the chapel where we rehearse. Somebody talked about her age in 1963 when President Kennedy was shot and then we all started comparing how old we were then. I was 11, home from school with chicken pox. My friend who started the conversation was already in college. That led me to thinking about my husband Fred, who was 15 years older than me. In 1963, he had been married for four years--without children.

Fred married his first wife in 1959. Until I was sitting in the church last night, I never thought about how they didn't adopt their first child until 1966. They spent seven years trying to conceive before they adopted a son, followed by a daughter two years later. In 1976, 17 years into their marriage, Fred's first wife became pregnant and gave birth to their second son. All those years, they must have been living with infertility and worrying that they might never have children. I'm not Fred's only wife who spent a long time without children. God knows why I never thought about this before.

Now I wish I could talk to Fred about it. Was he worried? Did he agree to adopt because he wanted children or because Annette did? It's one of those times when I wish I could have Fred back for a few minutes to ask all the questions to which I don't have answers. It would be swell if he could identify some of the tools in the garage and show me how to use the lawnmower, too.

Do I dare ask his ex? She was here for Fred's funeral, but I didn't think about it then. Do I just file this under ancient history that is none of my business?

I thought about lots of things during that long silence at church, little things like how much my feet hurt from standing and how I looked forward to having a snack when I got home to big things like thanking God for my many blessings. But realizing Fred and his first wife were childless for a long time really got my attention. After all that they went through, I came along asking for children. No wonder Fred wasn't up for another round.

Thanks for letting me share. Happy Easter to everyone. Please try to enjoy whatever you have in your life and not let what you don't have spoil the good stuff.

Can you forgive him or her for not giving you children?

Last week, one of my readers asked if I had written about forgiveness. It’s key to moving on past a lack of children, she said. I had not, but I think we should talk about it.

In a marriage where one partner can’t or doesn’t want to have children and the other one does, somebody is not going to get what they want. There’s just no way around it. Either you split up and look for someone who feels the same way, or one of you gives in. The person who didn’t really want kids agrees to have them anyway or the one did want them remains childless. It’s a painful situation. Do you love the other person enough to make this kind of sacrifice? And if you do, is part of you going to hate them forever or can you forgive them?

I was married twice. Husband number one let me know a couple years into the marriage that he did not want children, couldn’t stand babies and would leave me if I had one. Would he really have done that? I don’t know. After six years, we divorced. Looking back, I know that he was not an evil person. He was just young. He was not ready to be a father, even if I felt completely ready to have a baby. Should I hate him? No. It just wasn’t meant to be.

Then came Fred, husband number two. When we got married, he was 48 years old. His kids were 18, 16, and 8. He and his first wife had spent years raising them, and now freedom was in sight. He didn’t want to start over with another baby. In fact, he had had a vasectomy to make sure he and his ex wouldn’t conceive again. I know that he loved me enough that if I had insisted on having a child, he would have agreed to seek a way to make me pregnant, but I didn’t insist. I just ran around feeling sorry for myself. I can understand all that now, and I can forgive him. He didn’t give me children of my own but he gave me so many other things.

I’m still working on forgiving myself.

If you’re in the throes of unfulfilled baby lust, it isn’t easy to forgive anyone or anything who denies you a child. But try, just for a minute, to see things from their perspective. Maybe you can’t forgive them yet. Maybe you can’t live with this and need to find another mate or another way to deal with the situation. But try to see things from their side. What makes them feel the way they do? Understanding is the first step toward finding a solution you both can live with.

So, in this new year, however it turns out, whatever you have to do, try a little forgiveness.

DEAR READERS. THIS BLOG HAS MOVED TO ANOTHER ADDRESS. PLEASE MAKE YOUR COMMENTS THERE SO EVERYONE CAN READ THEM. YOU'LL FIND IT AT http://www.childlessbymarriageblog.com. SEE YOU THERE.

The road not taken

As I lay awake last night, one thought led to another, and I realized with a shock that the young sons of the man I dated before I met Fred must be in their 30s by now. I was so flabbergasted it woke me up completely. Forget sleeping.

Jason and Jeremy were 5 and 7 in the days when I dated their dad after my first marriage ended. We got along great, and I knew I'd be happy being their stepmother. I also knew that other children would follow because this boyfriend was eager to make babies with me. In fact, yesterday I found a poem I wrote about how I was worried that I might be pregnant out of wedlock. My, how things have changed. I never did get pregnant.

That boyfriend, let's call him Jack, was abusive. When he was in a good mood, things were great, but when he wasn't, look out. It would not have been a good marriage, but I could have had as many babies as I wanted.

Jack and I broke up for a while, and I started dating Gerry. He too was happy to welcome babies,although his crazy theory was: If you get pregnant, we'll get married. When I discovered he was doing drugs, I broke up with him. No babies there. I went back to Jack, but was lucky to escape relatively unscathed.

Then Fred came along. So nice, so kind, so loving. He didn't want to add any more children to the three kids he already had and he had had a vasectomy, but he was just about perfect in every other way. I married him and wound up not having children. Did I make the right decision?

If things had worked out differently, I could have had grown children by now.

Life happens one day, one choice at a time. None of us knows what lies ahead.

Complete Without Kids author interview

Ellen L. Walker, a psychologist practicing in Bellingham, Washington, is the author of Compete Without Kids, an Insider's Guide to Childfree Living by Choice or By Chance, which came out last month from Greenleaf Press. We talked by phone yesterday about life without children and about the book that was born from her experiences.

Walker, 50, has not had children. During her first marriage, her husband kept saying it was not the right time. They were going to school, working, too busy, etc. "He also said the same thing about getting a dog," Walker said. A lot of women get pregnant "by accident" but she didn't feel that was the right thing to do. However, she did get herself a dog, assuring him that she would take care of it.

After the marriage ended, she was resigned to being childless. But then she married Chris, who had grown children from his first marriage. Seeing him interact with his kids, she began to want her own children. Chris didn't want any more kids. Then 45, she consulted her doctor, who said she probably could still have children and referred her to a doctor who specialized in older women's pregnancies.

After many tearful talks with her husband, she began to think about all the ramifications of having a child at her age and realized it was not going to work for her and Chris. She thought about all the things she had been able to do in her life because she didn't have children: her fulltime psychology practice, travel, writing a book. Life was good,she decided, and she would have to accept that it was not going to include children.

"If I had married a different person, I probably would have ended up having kids," she said. "But it was never my top priority." Plus, she adds, "I seem to have been drawn to men who didn't want to have babies with me."

Walker calls herself childfree, not childless. "For me, it's really important to use the term childfree. It describes a lifestyle, not a loss. The term childless has such a negative connotation." It's important to focus on the things we are able to do because we don't have children and accept that no one can do everything in this life, she says.

Walker admires people who have taken serious time to think about their decision. She didn't do that, and it has been difficult finding peace. Now her friends are going into the grandmother stage, and she is beginning to realize "this is going to be with me my whole life."

Lots of couples these days find themselves disagreeing about whether to have children. It's no longer assumed that after marriage comes babies. Walker recommends they see a marriage counselor to help them work it out. "It's a huge life decision. To me, it could be a deal-breaker." A therapist knows how to process all the feelings that come up and help people find closure.

Seeking closure was one of the reasons Walker wrote her book. "I wanted to find some peace of mind." She started journaling, then started getting other people to tell their stories. She found that the childfree people she met were eager to talk about it, and she began doing interviews. "I realized that a lot of people had a lot of unfinished business with it."

She admits she had a hard time disclosing so much of her own personal information in the book, but she hopes it will help others who are trying to figure out whether or not to have children. She wants young women to see role models who aren't mothers and to take their decision as seriously as any other big decision in their lives.

"You're not a loser if you decide not to be a parent," she stresses.

***
Walker's book is available at Amazon.com and other retail outlets as well as through Greenleaf BookGroup Press. Visit Walker's website and read her blog at www.completewithoutkids.com.