This is what you’re going to get when you have someone who has a hyper-analytical approach to personal interactions and interpersonal problem solving vs applying common sense. A normal woman would have sorted this dithering out in about 5 minutes. This scenario is going to be drug out as long and tediously as possible.
You’re right, I overanalyze everything to hell. I also have emotions and shit and feel things that aren’t rational, particularly in the immediate aftermath of them happening. Sometimes I think my ability to articulate my feelings really backfires in these kinds of threads. I have a tendency toward melodrama in writing and thinking, but to me the most important thing is behavior, and in that regard I’m no drama queen.
It strikes you as punitive because I was pissed off when I wrote it. He asked me what he could do, I thought about it, we had a conversation, he wrote some shit down. It’s not unreasonable to not want to be jerked around about something like this. And treating everything like an HR performance plan is sort of our schtick. We have a very collaborative relationship. He’s a behavioral psychologist and I’m a fan of the field, we are usually pretty concrete and structured about addressing any issues we have, to the point of writing down goals with deadlines and sticking to them. I understand if this sounds weird to you, but it works for us really well.
Therein lies the problem. He has chosen a career as an academic. There is no ‘‘settled’’ in our immediate future, possibly not for a decade. This imaginary ‘‘when things stop being so stressful’’ time is never going to happen.
My conceptualization of him changed for a good reason - because this particular incident is really unusual for him, being the careful and meticulous planner that he is. I interpreted his lack of typical cautious behavior as an indication that he really was ready. He commented to me out of the blue, in fact, about, oh three weeks ago, ‘‘You know, I’m really starting to feel more excited about having a child.’’ Three weeks ago. He seemed really into it. And then Friday night, total 180. This behavior is not typical for the man I have been living with for 8 years. Maybe to say it totally alters my conceptualization is over the top hyperbole, but I am fucking concerned. Whether we have a child or not, I am concerned.
Hmm, never thought about it like that. I can definitely see that possibility.
So what’s the common sense approach? Help a common-sense impaired sister out.
Concur… when we had our first I was forced to quit undercover narcotics and take an extra job as bank security. I promised that I would take whatever measures so she could attend law school. My current 13yr old was born in June and she was in Law school that September. When are you ever really ready?? I think he’s navel gazing way too much on this. I bet a kid would be great for him… because the one thing they do is teach you how unimportant some of your shit really is.
Never mind, astro, I get it. Your common sense conclusion is that he doesn’t want a child.
Lots of good food for thought here.
olives, I’m wondering how much of the problem is that he isn’t ready for a child and how much that he isn’t ready for the kind of intensity you were bringing into it. Cos, girl, some of your posts sound like you were as focused and intent on this “motherhood” thing as a laser steamroller… having a child isn’t something that replaces the rest of your life!
You’re absolutely right. What I did was selfish too. Even though my words said, ‘‘I want to hear the truth,’’ every other part of me was demonstrating otherwise. As astro points out, we speak with our actions. I didn’t realize this until you said it, so thanks. I’ll apologize tomorrow (er, later today.)
I feel bad for him too. Sitting with all these emotions and reading the perspectives in this thread have made me begin to see things more from his POV and it was just really kind of ridiculous of me to expect him to put all his emotions aside and commit to something he didn’t feel ready for. Dio’s right that I often do set my own feelings aside for what he wants, but this was a case where I have been doing the exact opposite.
So in this context, his behavior makes a lot of sense. Because I’ve never really done anything like that to him before. I’ve never behaved that way before. So I shouldn’t be surprised by him behaving in an unusual way too.
Yeah, talking about immediate feelings, not facts. Yes, I was angry. Yes, I felt betrayed. Yes, I was too narrow-minded and focused on my own experience to consider his POV. Yes, all of this.
We both made mistakes. And we both clearly have some issues to deal with before we have children. I don’t understand how I could have such a tremendous lapse in judgment and empathy for the person I love most in the world, but there you go.
Olives, I’m really sorry to hear what has happened here. This has been and is going to be a difficult time for you and your husband to work through, but from what I have read about your marriage, I have every confidence that you will work through it together and come out the other side, healthy and whole.
You’re getting a fair bit of flak here from people who are being quite judgemental about your motives and inner character. But I completely understand where you are coming from and the pain you are feeling.
It’s only natural to use a forum like this to write out and explore your feelings, however some people can interpret that as you being equally intense and single minded in real life. I don’t for a minute think you are. We are not the sum of the things we post on this forum, we all have rich and varied lives, and it’s silly to assume that someone is only the things they post here.
Getting back to the issue at hand, do many of your peers have children? Or are you all still mostly childless? Maybe if your husband was around other fathers of young children, he could gain a better understanding of what impact it has had on their lives, both positive and negative. Often we fear what we don’t know, and then when we do know, we realise there isn’t nearly as much to fear.
Being judgmental is the internet’s job, it’s part of the reason I came here. I wanted to hear it straight. My husband, my friends, they are on my side, they are biased. I wanted to find out what all this shit sounds like from people who are not biased to take my side. If I’m being a selfish obsessive asshat, I want to hear it. If I’m being a doormat, I want to hear it. I’m getting a number of emerging themes, the totality of which suggest neither of us are ready for a child.
I feel like there’s been a grain of truth to everything stated in this thread, however harshly. Being called self-absorbed isn’t really that offensive because it’s probably somewhat true, particularly at this moment.
The other insults don’t hurt because they aren’t true. One perk of being self-absorbed is the ability to fully know your flaws. 
I don’t know when, or if, he will be ready for parenthood, but I think we just need to focus on strengthening our relationship and feeling happy in the moment. I realize any kind of ultimatum or expectation of a plan for parenthood is going to be counterproductive to that goal.
To change our original plan and attempt to bring a child into the family on such short notice was a remarkably ill-conceived thing to do, and not a mistake either of us are likely to repeat. If it comes, it needs to come out of natural mutual desire, not endless discussions of me trying to convince him I am right.
Believe it or not, this experience has been really good for our relationship. Sometimes you need a good shaking up.
Emphasis added.
Is that at all what we are talking about here? From what I can see, we are looking at two people who do not have real jobs, don’t have plans to get real jobs in the next couple of years, and might not have ever held a real job for more than a year in the past. And there’s something upthread about $50k in educational debt. Why is a kid a good idea in that situation? Or did I miss the lottery episode?
I do agree that in some ways the life change may not be as transformative as either one is expecting, but the life change is essentially irreversible and affects the kid, too.
I know people who mix kids with grad school, and it usually involves massive amounts of family help, one spouse working a stable job (like nurse or government employee), and probably both. **Olives **seems thrilled about some kind of SAHM idyll, when what is accessible is probably more like balancing a reliable, regular job with working motherhood.
Also, I’m not a medical professional, but **olives **is probably in a high risk group for post-partum depression. Or her wild swings in enthusiasm could swing away from motherhood. When it doesn’t turn out to be transformative, how will that disappointment go over? This would leave her husband 100% in charge of bills and the kid. Sure, that is something you step up to if you have to, but it’s not something wise people step into if they don’t have to. I am surprised olives’ therapist isn’t reining this in a bit. How honestly are you discussing the reality, as opposed to feelings, in therapy?
An academic career isn’t an excuse for unbridled chaos. If one person’s PhD is going to bring instability to the marriage for a while, then it may be the other person’s turn to bring the stability. Read some of the psych literature about the benefits of stability to young children. If you want the best for your kid, don’t recreate your own instability, create some stability that you bring the kid into.
Well, we know we’re not having kids anytime soon, so let’s use this as a teachable moment. If the life change is irreversible and the experience is, as some Dopers have mentioned in the past, ‘‘relentless’’ and ‘‘like a bomb exploding,’’ then at what point does being prepared become an obsession?
I thought I was doing the right thing by planning out the budget ahead of time, making sure we could afford it, making sure we were covered by insurance, and, incidentally, finding out what I could do to avoid the post-partum depression that I am a high risk for. I expect the experience to be overwhelming and stressful, particularly during the first year. I expect drudgery, isolation, and difficult times, but I also expected it would be worth it. But some people feel that trying to prepare for that is too intense or obsessive or whatever. I don’t understand – if this is a huge life change, then why is it so weird to prepare for it as thoroughly as possible? And why is it weird to be excited about it? Something that started out as abstract became increasingly more real to me as I dealt with the minutiae of planning, and I became excited. Why is this obsessive?
People talk about being a SAHM like it’s something I’ve decided I want to do for 18 years. We talked about it, and I said I would like at least the first year at home with the child, again, something we can afford, because I did a line-by-line budget for the next two years. We have the money. It’s not about money. Money is not an issue. I would not have a child if í couldn’t afford it.
I haven’t talked about the baby much at all in therapy, other than to mention it is a goal we were working on. I’ve been more focused on resolving other issues to expand my social network, resolve intimacy problems and work on cognitive distortions that lead to depression and anxiety, all which I imagine will impact the child’s sense of stability in the long run.
No therapist has ever questioned my ability to parent a child. I have a demonstrated history of handling responsibility very well.
Again, I’m confused, because I thought that was what I was doing. People have developed this idea that I don’t understand the sacrifices and realities of raising a child, perhaps because I have emphasized those less in my posts about it here. I feel like over the last two months, in preparing, I have focused almost exclusively on handling those realities – the daily drudgery, the feelings of being overwhelmed, the challenge of providing stability. There is nothing I have done over the last two months that didn’t have a precise purpose to make this transition as smooth as possible.
Frankly, I think I was doing a damn fine job. Where I fucked up is minimizing my husband’s feelings and rushing him into this before he was ready. That was selfish and wrongheaded. I didn’t do it intentionally, but I was so excited I just didn’t think enough about how it would affect his life in terms of stress and additional responsibility. I convinced myself that I could do it completely on my own, that I would work so hard to take care of the drugery and responsibilities that all he would have to worry about was making regular play time with the kid. This was wrong. I cut him out. It was wrong. How many times do I have to say it?
I don’t understand why people think I’m not stable. Because I reacted emotionally when something I really wanted didn’t happen? I’ve been mentally stable for years. Being willing to resolve lingering mental health issues to improve my quality of life is not the equivalent of being unable to handle child-rearing. If I waited to never be depressed or anxious again before I had a child, I would never have a child.
As far as the comments about ‘‘leaving my past behind,’’ I would hope everyone in this thread understands by now that is a specific reference to the fact that I had come this close to resolving intimacy issues with my husband as a by-product of the agreement to conceive, and that at the time I started this thread, I felt so betrayed by him that I viewed our progress as totally lost. That hurt worse than anything because it was about intimacy and trust between me and my husband, and that’s where a lot of this intensity of feeling is coming from. Three days later, I feel that was an overreaction, of course we can continue to make progress as a couple.
Tell me what I’m missing.
This is all very sensible advice, and I took a lot of good things from it. Thank you, mnemosyne.
I’d also like to add that, I read with some trepidation the responses that are saying, “My husband was scared too but once the baby came everything was just fine.” It doesn’t always work that way; sometimes it is tragically the other way. When it comes to making the decision, if one party doesn’t want the kid (or doesn;t feel “ready”, whatever that means), it is really safest for all involved to not do it.
I’m thinking of you and your struggles, olives; I know you’re grieving and overwhelmed with everything. Best of luck to you for whatever turns out to be next in your life.
I’m very late to this thread, but this was kind of what I was seeing, too. Plus, olives, you’re putting a lot of pressure on yourself. As you stated in your OP, you were taking on all the responsibility of the baby planning so your husband would experience as little of it as possible. I don’t see that as collaborative. That’s very one-sided (not selfishly so), and doesn’t seem sustainable. In my experience, that’s a recipe for future resentment.
I’m so sorry you’re going through this. I hope that when your husband decides he is ready to consider a baby, you’ll let him in more on the baby planning. I think it’s wonderful that you’re being so responsible about it - the financial realities of having two kids to put through college eventually have begun to hit us already - but it seemed that the planning was taking you away from your husband. Plus, it’s hard to form a bond with someone (the future baby) if someone else is taking on all the responsibility for it. Best of luck to you and your husband.
Spend at least a full year with the major relationship issues resolved. Then both of you think about having a kid. Just enjoy what it is like having those issues resolved for an entire year.
Run this sentence by your therapist “… I had come this close to resolving intimacy issues with my husband as a by-product of the agreement to conceive, and… I felt so betrayed by him that I viewed our progress as totally lost.” There is a difference between letting your therapist know that you are trying to have a baby, and that you have intimacy issues, and that you felt the decision to have a baby resulted in the resolution of those intimacy issues.
Your line-by-line budget may allow you to afford a kid if nothing major goes wrong. People do raise kids on not much money. But a grad student stipend does not put you in a position of not having to worry about the financial and material aspects, even if you’re single. You getting sick or him having to take a semester off would throw a major wrench in that budget. When you have 6 months’ expenses saved in cash and can afford to save 10% of your income each month after the kid expenses, then you’re getting a little closer to being able to do this without worrying about the financial and material aspects. Obviously it’s possible to raise kids while worrying about money, people do it all the time, but don’t confuse neutral cash flow with financial security.
(Bolding mine)I find this statement to be bewildering. I don’t know what you mean by it. Would the intimacy issues have been equally resolved if you had pursued adoption? If it’s too personal and you’d rather not get into it, I understand.
Olives, why did you need to be planning to conceive a baby in order to work on your intimacy issues? I think that’s an important point - if you want to work through your issues, you need to do so, for yourself if for nothing else. Please don’t use this delay in having a child as a reason to stop.
Also, I think maybe you have an unhealthy emotional relationship with your husband if him changing his mind about having a baby right now causes such a profound sense of betrayal of trust in you and means a screeching halt in dealing with your issues. That’s a heavy burden for him to bear. I think you need to work on not only having balance in your life but being balanced in yourself and your relationship with your husband before you add a baby into the mix.
I’ve hesitated to say it, but throughout this thread you give the impression to me of being somewhat emotionally unstable. I think you’ve made enormous progress given your past, but I also think you have a long way to go, and the only way to not pass some of that on to your kid is to resolve it now before there even is a kid.
Wow, exhausting thread. I wanted to add that a lot of couples go through Big Scary Shake-ups like these, so you’re not alone, and it’s not a sign that your marriage is “at risk”. I do recommend discussing this with your therapist as well, s/he may have additional insights.
From what I’ve read in your past threads, you and your husband have a strong, loving relationship, and you’ll get through this. Be tough but fair with yourselves, and definitely discuss with professionals. Your husband may benefit from a third-party perspective to help him sort through his own thoughts and feelings, especially someone better trained than us yahoos out on the internet. 
Take care.
When it becomes your reason for being and drives everything you do.
Thank you, all. I appreciate those of you who have offered well-wishes and respectful concerns. I think so many valid points have been raised, I feel like I have more insight into what really happened and that empowers us to not let it happen again in the future.
How about a grad stipend, plus $30k in savings, plus the student loans we had to live off of anyway, plus a parent with a completed professional Masters degree who can always get a job if she needs to? Do you think that’s a reasonable financial position to bring a child into? Is it a guarantee of financial success? No, but I think it’s a lot more than other people have.
Alrighty, I’ll get even more explicit.
I have PTSD, flashbacks and pain with intercourse. For 8 years, we’ve dealt with this, and there have been avoidance issues with sex. Last year, I did prolonged exposure therapy which resolved a great deal of the emotional stuff, which made me, for the first time ever in my life, actively want a sex life.
That didn’t make the pain with intercourse go away, though. And you kinda have to be able to have sex in order to conceive a child. It is likely that if I did not agree to conceive a child I would not have prioritized resolving this to the extent that I did. This is because it was transformed from something I would like to work on into something that needs to be resolved in order to conceive a child. That is how conception is different than adoption.
That the treatment was seeming to work is a happy accident, and one that made me realize I have had control over this problem all along and can probably lick other problems I have long deemed intractable. I was in a very empowered and positive space. We have just arrived at Stage 7 of 10, which is the part where we work on fostering a sense of trust and safety, and is immediately before the transition to pain-free intercourse.
And when my husband told me he was not ready for a child, I felt betrayed and lost hope for approximately 3 days. Apparently feeling a loss of hope and feeling betrayed for 3 days after something like this means I am emotionally unstable. I don’t get it. I think extremely unrealistic expectations are being placed on how rational I’m supposed to be feeling after something like that. Yeah, I’m going to exaggerate, grieve, be angry, feel a profound sense of loss, and be pissed that I’ve put so much effort and energy into preparing for something that’s not going to happen. I mean shit, I could have been doing something a lot more fun than dealing with insurance companies this summer. Even at a very basic level that’s annoying.
I realize in my OP I said I was structuring my entire life around a child, but that’s what I thought you have to do. I thought for the first year or whatever it totally takes over your life and then you find a balance and get better at coping. I was just preparing for having it take over at first, not necessarily permanently.
But yes, having a child is an important thing I want to do. I’m not going to minimize that I want to do it really bad. I’m not going to totally lose my shit in any kind of significant long-term way if it turns out I can’t have that, but yeah, it was something I really wanted, and I feel a loss because of it.
I can sympathize with Mr. Olives. Having a child is a scary decision even if you are in a good place financially and with stable long term employment. For someone who is that meticulous, having a child while in school and not having a steady job lined must have been overwhelming. I wonder if he was in denial about it for a while until the enormity of it finally broke through to him. In my opinion, it would be a good idea for you to finish your degree and get out in the workplace for a year or two before you have the child so you can get a bit more savings in place, and have the experience on your resume for when you decide to reenter the workplace.
The good news is that you and your husband are both young. Fertility doesn’t drop until 34 for women. My wife and I waited until we were 33, and she got pregnant very fast. If you wait three more years, you will out of school and working, and he will be finishing up his PhD.
I just saw your last post and wanted to add that it is very reasonable and normal for you to feel a sense of loss and betrayal. It will take some time to get over this, and you should allow yourself some time to grieve for what could have been. I think given some time, you and your husband can move this fight and start a healthy and happy family.