Family Forum / Marriage / Marriage / March 2006

You are confusing two unrelated things:

1) how much does your husband love you.

2) does he want another child.

These things may be related for _you_ (that is, your love for him may
be related to wanting children with him), but they are probably not at
all related for _him_  (his love for you has nothing to do with wanting
children with you).

You are also getting trapped in a false comparison.  Yes,  he had kids
with his first wife.  Then he married you and acquired an interest in
two _more_ kids.  Maybe he's done and is no longer interested in having
kids.

I suggest working as hard as you need to in order to separate the two
issued (1 and 2 above) in your mind.  They are _different_!  When you
get to the stage where you understand that him not wanting another kid
_doesn't_ mean he doesn't love you (or that having kids with his first
wife means he loves her, or loved her more than you, or whatever),
_then_ if you still want more kids talk to him about _that_ issue,  not
about how if he loved you he'd have a child with you.

How are children an extension of love between people? Are you seriously
saying that a man's love for a woman has to do with whether he wants her to
bear his child?

Let's look at thing from a potential different perspective:

Most average men don't equate having another child wioth Love.
Most men are much more practical in nature. They can love you wioth all
their heart, and realize that perhaps you guys don't have time and
energy to have and raise another child.

Perhaps he loves you so much he is looking forward to spending more
alone time with you rather then have both of you distracted with
another new responsibility.

Maybe he's thinking "She'd rather change diapers then spending more
time with me." and feeling like you don't love him enough.

Okay... I totally understand how you feel.  When I met my husband, he was
the first man I'd ever really, completely loved, and felt cherished by.  I
already had two kids; he had two, as well.  My ex was not exactly a model
husband during my pregnancy, to put it kindly, and I *yearned* to be
pregnant with my husband's child, to have the experience of having a husband
who adored you while you were carrying his child, to create a child of my
own with him (and yes, I was jealous of his ex for that reason).  I so
wanted to experience that *with him*, to know joy during my pregnancy, to
feel appreciated and loved by the man I was with.

For a number of reasons, we ended up not having kids together.  And, while I
still, occasionally wax nostalgic for that experience, I know that having
that experience would mean that we couldn't have the experiences we now
have -- at least not for a long while.  We don't have the stressors of small
children.  We can devote time and resources to ourselves as a *couple*,  not
as the parents of small children.

I personally think both partners should be enthusiastic about having
children before they have them, and for this reason, I think you should not
have them, at least not right now.  For me, it ended up being enough for me
to know that he did adore me, and, if we were at a different phase of our
lives, he would have been blown away to have shared that experience with me.
Like your husband, he would have been willing to have me get pregnant, but,
the fact is, we had reached a point in our lives where we were looking at a
different phase, and he didn't really want to start all over again.  That
was a big part of our decision.

I do understand your feelings, but you might want to step back, and look at
the reality of the impact of having a child on your life.  You may more
fully understand his reluctance.

Sheila

This must be very difficult for you.  I can't begin to imagine what it feels
like.  My husband and i each had two kids from previous marriages.  When we
got together i was no longer fertile (due to sugery) and so it was never
something we had to decide about.  I was concerned early on in our
relationship that it would bother him that i couldn't conceive, but we already
had each raised our own kids and were at the point of moving on to the next
phase of life instead of starting all over again with diapers and sesame
street and kindergarten, pta, etc. etc.  I can't really say if i'd feel
differently had i still been ABLE to conceive, though.  Or if he would...
I never felt any jealousy about his ex being mother to his kids or any of
that, i had my own kids and previous life with all that and was satisfied
with having given birth to two.

Our kids are all grown and on their own now, and we call our dog "our baby"
becuz we adopted her together.  Once when we were on vacation, we did this
thing where you have both your photos taken, choose a boy or girl and it makes
a picture of what it figures the kid would look like at whatever age you
choose.  We "had" a boy..  It gave me a sad twinge, and i think it did for him
too becuz he put it away and never took it back out...

As for love and bearing a child, my husband loves me very much even tho i'm
barren and couldn't give him a child even if he wanted one.  Perhaps your
husband's love for you is also not connected with the idea of bringing a new
life into your lives, but rather in the connectedness of the two of you...
geez, sorry i'm not making much sense here!  Remember, after children grow up
and move on, what you have for the rest of your lives is each other.  When
you're young and starting a family, it's hard to think about those "later"
years, but they're so special...

I think you and your husband need to talk talk talk and talk some more about
this.  Good luck.

Could be, but it also could be that he's overwhelmed with the three
kids that he's already got and presumeably supporting, along with your
two kids.  That's a lot of kids, and if you're all in the house
together then adding another one might be too much for him to
contemplate.

I feel that it's a dangerous thing to confuse loving someone with
having to have a baby with them.  Maybe they mean similar things to
you, but it's not that way for everyone.  Don't assign motives to him
that he may not have.

Lauri in WA

Robang:

I think you've gotten a lot of good comments about separating out your
feelings about your relationship from your interest in having another
child. I would like to add that it's wonderful that you have such great
thing going on with your second husband. I recently remarried, and I
feel the same way!

And yes, we are faced with a similar question of whether or not to have
children together. In my case, I have two children from a previous
marriage, but my husband does not. If he really, really wanted another
child, I'd be fine with it. If I really, really did not want another
child, he'd be fine with that. Right now we are leaning in the direction
of "making a baby together," but he's doing more of the leaning, and I
am doing more of the "let's think about the practical implications and
if/how we can make it work." If there were 5 children in the picture
already, though--no way in h*ll, is all I can say. I just can't imagine
divvying up my time, attention (and financial resources!) so thinly and
still have time for the quality relationship with my husband that makes
for such a wonderful relationship to start off with.

The question, then, is--what to do with these feelings of closeness and
bonding that you feel for your husband? You want to have them
materialized in the form of a baby, but perhaps there's another
direction you can channel them into that will give you something
meaningful and major to share, and that you can both get on board with.
In my marriage, we have lots of short-term home-improvement projects
that we work on together, and we also have built together a shared
vision of the future that involves a dramatic change of lifestyle
(moving to the country). We are always working toward this
goal--together. In this way, this marriage is different from any other
relationship I've ever been in, too--I've never had anyone that really
worked together with me to build a better future, and that's a precious
thing to share.

There is always the dog idea, too.