I disagree that this is possible.
Is this really the way you feel? Your increasingly black and white take on things is so odd it makes a person think you may have some organic mental health issue where your personality is shifting, or this is some little social experiment you are engaging in to see how many people will go along with an absurdist position.
Nah, he just doesn’t think things through before taking a strong stance and then won’t do so afterward or concede to having been hasty. (I think that’s at the heart of most black and white thinking - it’s just easier to not have to consider the gray.)
It doesn’t sound to me like Olives’ husband doesn’t want / isn’t ready for a baby yet so much as he’s terrified of the related economic / support issues, the logistical responsibilities.
Of course that’s just from reading between the lines.
But he’s not saying “what if I hold the baby wrong and hurt her neck” or “what if he doesn’t bond with me” or “what if something happens in the middle of the night and I sleep through it”, is he?
I can’t imagine ever putting myself in a position where someone else is dependent on me continuing to have an income. My employment, when I’ve been gainfully employed, has always seemed almost accidental, and quite fragile, and not necessarily repeatable. Certainly not like anything I have any control over. I’m probably an extreme case but it seems to me like the OPs husband is worried about that sort of thing.
And if so, maybe an arrangement in which the babycare and the economic wageearning were both split a bit more down the middle might make him a lot more amenable towards doing the parenting thing, or towards doing it sooner.
Or not; may not be applicable; offer null and void where prohibited; objects in the mirror may be closer than they seem ;etc
LOL! That you are asking this of **Dio **is hilarious.
Again a thread involving kids is about to turn into the **Dio **show.
Another thread Diogenized.
I’m so sorry about this, Olives. I know how badly you wanted to work on starting your family. Next time you talk to your husband about this ask him to explain his specific concerns. This is just something to consider, but if I were in his shoes and committed to at least 2-3 more years of school and my spouse wanted to be a stay at home parent I think that is the point where I would have lost confidence in the situation because the thought of being the sole bread winner in a family terrifies me.
My fiance was laid off on Friday but that is okay because I am still working. If I had been staying home with a kid and our income went from comfortable to nothing I wouldn’t have been able to handle it at all. We both need to be working at least part time for me to feel comfortable with parenthood. Perhaps your husband feels the same way or wants to know that at least one of you are completely done with school before a baby becomes an option for you and, if that is the case, would you be happy being a working mother?
I know this will work out for you someday and when it does you will be a fantastic parent.
Also, I just want you to know that this is totally how I picture your future child. 
Probably. One thing that a friend of my husband’s brought up when he discussed this with her is that we have always planned on adopting an older child, a plan which consists of significant expense in terms of time, money, and resources and which made the barriers seem rather huge when we discussed it. When we began to consider conception, suddenly those barriers disappeared (new ones, of course, appearing in their place.) Because it was a such a novelty, I think it may have seemed suddenly easier to him, until the reality set in.
Marxxx, I know you’re trying to help, but I feel very irritated when people say stuff like this to me having no idea where I came from or what I have been through in my short lifetime. It’s just slightly less irritating than ‘‘every family is dysfunctional.’’ I have perspective. I just hurt.
It means you don’t make a decision like that lightly. It means if someone comes to you and says, ‘‘you need to be honest with me, if there is even a slight chance you are going to change your mind, I don’t want to pursue this,’’ you need to tell that person, ‘‘let me think about it for a month’’ or whatever the hell you have to do before committing to something that huge. And if you’re really not sure, you ESPECIALLY do not dump the responsibility for planning into the lap of the person who really wants it, effectively wasting two months of their time and energy planning for something enormous that at the last minute you’re going to announce can’t happen. Because this is what has happened.
This ‘‘obsession’’ people think I have, it has really consisted of budgeting and making sure insurance covers prenatal care and learning about pregnancy and dealing with some deeply personal shit that is 100% necessary to conceive. These are things that had to be done which he asked me to do. And this hasn’t been just about logistics, it’s been about overcoming fucking PTSD and longstanding intimacy issues, a long, uncomfortable, time-consuming, emotionally draining process. Agreeing to compromise via conception dumped so much shit in my lap that I have never considered having to deal with, and suddenly pretty much overnight my desire to become a parent is riding on my ability to face my darkest demons.
You’re damn right I got serious. You’re damn right I got intense. I was actually healing in ways I never thought I would, because I had no choice but to do so if I wanted a child. He didn’t just annihilate my short-term hopes for a child, do you understand? He brought my healing from trauma to a screeching halt, because TRUSTING HIM was a fundamental requirement for that healing. I don’t really care to get into it further, but it was a big fucking deal, and way, way more important than whether we have a child immediately.
There is nothing I have done other than take care of the shit that needs to be done before I get pregnant. Where some of you see ‘‘intensity and obsession,’’ I see dealing with the reality of having a child as much as possible before the burdens of graduate school took away my time and attention. I don’t see where I’ve placed any unrealistic expectations or demands on a child, I really don’t expect anything of the child other than to be a part of our family. It’s going to be a bunch of tedious work and stress and frustration in return for the huge blessing that many people get out of having children. I pretty much expect to feel overwhelmed and depressed at first, but it’s not like I haven’t gotten through hard times before.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about any of this, re-reading what I have wrote, understanding the true cost of this experience, it’s that you should never fucking compromise about a child. It makes sense that we tried, because that’s how we’re used to doing things, but it was an ill-conceived idea.
First of all, wild babies could not drag me away from my husband. I do think, deep down, he wants children, I just think he has totally unrealistic expectations about how he’s supposed to feel before he has them. I feel he lacks insight into what having a child really is, in the same way that people are ‘‘in love with love’’ without understanding what it’s like to be in love. As long as it’s an abstraction for him, he’s not going to feel ‘‘ready.’’ We strongly disagree on this point, but he has agreed to consider my perspective.
Second of all, we just formalized my expectations in the way you mention. I have been racking my brain trying to think what thing, what concession will make me feel better about what he did, and the reality I keep coming back to is that the only way to make this better is for him to take responsibility for this issue.
So we put it out in writing. I want to have a child. I am ready to have a child. It doesn’t have to be NOW NOW NOW but this is an expectation and a desire that I have that is not going to change. I expect we will do this via adoption.
If he intends to convince me that he truly desires a child ‘‘someday,’’ he must take concrete steps to prove it. He must effective immediately start thinking about what it is he truly needs to feel ready, and once he identifies that thing, he needs to create a plan and commit to it once and for all. Starting in October 2010 we will have a semi-formal discussion in which he updates me on his progress. That doesn’t mean he can’t talk to me at any time, it just means we’re setting out some benchmarks to keep this on the radar screen.
If, by the time I graduate in 9 months, he is unable to identify what he needs effectively enough to be able to commit to his own plan, then he agrees to marital counseling in order for us to resolve this difference.
I do not expect him to be ready for a child in 9 months. I expect him to know what he needs to be ready. I told him I am not doing his homework for him, though I am open to discussing anything he brings up, I am not taking responsibility or initiative on this in any way.
And if he thinks these terms are in any way unreasonable after what he’s put me through then we need counseling IMMEDIATELY. (Fortunately, he agreed these were reasonable expectations.)
That enough backbone for ya? 
The key words were. “without being an asshole.” No, you can’t promise somebody something that they really want, then break that promise (without any external cirmstances having changed) without being an asshole. He was an asshole for promising in the first place. He broke her trust. Now she can’t really trust any promise he makes. His word is no longer reliable.
Your husband’s in a Phd program and wants to hold off on a child until things are less stressful. This is a perfectly normal response.
The trainwreck that is this thread, however, is far from normal. Why do you feel the need to analyze everything to death? Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Those circumstances were the same when he made the promise. Nothing changed. If he’d said that in first place there would be no thread. He gave his word about something very important to her and then took it back. That’s the problem. It doesn’t mean he can’t learn from it or mature, but it’s not just A-OK either. Did things change when I wasn’t looking? Are people not expected to honor their word anymore. Why should anyone ever promise anything if promises hold no meaning or honor?
I’m sure you and Olives are a blast at parties.
I absolutely believe in keeping promises but this isn’t tort reform we’re talking about, it’s having a baby. There are two people in this situation and both should be fully ready for the kind of commitment it takes to raise a child. If one isn’t, then they shouldn’t. It’s better to find out now then in the second trimester. I realize this an upsetting situation but Olives’s many posts of introspection sound less like her working through this and more about how she can make her husband’s life as difficult as possible as a form of punishment. It’s demented.
If you’re not ready, then don’t lie and say you are.
Yeah, staying the course worked really well for George Bush.
I’m sure he wasn’t lying. He probably got so caught up in the situation Olives created for herself that he believed he wanted a child as much as she did. Then reality set in. As it should, btw. Kids aren’t impulse buys.
Time to check out of crazytown.
The point is that it wasn’t a lie at the time. What if it had been Olives who realized she wasn’t quite ready yet after all? Would her initial desire have been a lie? It sounds like he knows he made a horrible mistake. You coming in and calling him an asshole and a liar is counterproductive.
By that logic, no one has any obligation to honor any promise ever because they can always just say they changed their mind. A man’s word either means something or it doesn’t.
[Fighting overwhelming urge to use roll-eyes smiley]This to me doesn’t fall in the “promise” category. It’s like your analogy of leaving someone at the altar, which it doesn’t actually correlate to. It’s like breaking off an engagement if you realize you’ve made a mistake. It doesn’t make a person an asshole; it makes them mistaken. Should you follow through with a marriage because you gave your word?[/Fighting overwhelming urge to use roll-eyes smiley]
I’m not sure what issues you’re bringing in here, but they are definitely affecting your ability to grasp the reality of the situation. Or else I have seriously miscommunicated. Or something. I generally don’t consider trying to do something you want and discuss for 5 years to be impulsive. The only thing I changed my mind about was the method of bringing a child to the family. And the only reason I changed my mind about that is because he asked me to. We’ve always talked about a mutual desire to have children. I don’t understand where you get ‘‘impulsive’’ from asking to make those plans more concrete.
I also have no idea where you get the idea that I want to punish my husband. I would say the exact opposite is true. My feelings are hurt and I’m pissed off, but as I stated upthread, he never did anything to deliberately hurt me. While my desire for a child has been pretty consistent, I acknowledged that my sudden feeling of immediate need for a child was coming from an unhealthy place. I don’t want my husband to commit to anything he doesn’t want to do, certainly not something this huge. That’s not in the best interest of the relationship or a child.
My husband isn’t a liar or an asshole, he’s a wonderful man and I would stay with him for the rest of his life regardless of whether he ever agreed to have children. But he made a mistake that hurt me very deeply and there’s no way that’s not going to have ramifications for our relationship. If you think an expectation of marital counseling to resolve our differences is some kind of demented punishment, I don’t understand what kind of world you live in. It seems like the most logical and fair expectation there is.
What do you think is more realistic? What do you think is the appropriate response to a couple who has differences about whether or not they are ready for a child? Am I supposed to just trust that the next time he tells me he’s ready, he really means it this time? How many times does he get to change his mind before I have the right to set boundaries on this issue?
You shouldn’t give your word in the first place, that’s the point. You don’t give your word unless you’re absolutely prepared to keep it. If you have any doubt at all don’t give the word. Once you give it, your honor is at stake, A man who is not as good as his word has no dick. Especially when he gives his word to his wife. If a wife can’t trust her husband at his word, then what kind of a husband is he?
But people can be committed to something one hundred percent and later change their mind or emotions. People promise to love their spouses when they marry and yet divorce is far from uncommon. Is it lying to choose to marry someone and to then later divorce them?