He's Not Ready For A Child, And I'm Sad.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
161

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with couples having kids starting in their 30s or waiting until they are fully established in their careers. In my academic family, most of the women have their first kid close to 40 (thankfully we’re extra-fertile). But that’s because it’s what both people in the relationship wanted.

The issue here is that you want a child now, olives. That’s a common and reasonable desire, and totally doable in your current situation. I think it’s unfair of your husband to expect you to wait that long if he really does want to have a family with you. In fact I think your strong desire to have and raise a child totally outweighs his vague ideals of being ‘settled’ and having less stress. That might never happen - he could feel unsettled and stressed until retirement or beyond!

I’m so sorry this is happening to you. I have baby fever too (totally different reasons why I can’t have one now, that are entirely my fault and up to me to resolve) and it’s probably the most emotional issue I’ve ever had to deal with.

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I don’t want to go to counseling to change his mind. I want to go to counseling so I don’t resent him and it doesn’t destroy our relationship.

[QUOTE=astro]
At the risk or stirring up the natives there is a Mars-Venus aspect to this you don’t seem to be grokking. This is not a man who has kids or other baggage, this is an employed, professional who is married, has no children, and has a wife who is eager to have kids. Speaking as a man, for a happily married man to stand in the face of that freight train of desire on the part of his loving wife, and decide to push it onto a track five years into the future … I mean seriously what is going to take before you wake up and smell the coffee?
[/QUOTE]

He’s not an employed professional, he’s a graduate student on a tiny stipend who will not be receiving his Ph.D. for another three years. Did you miss the list of crap he’s going to have to deal with during the next three years? Qualifying examinations, lab work, classes, clinical hours, and his dissertation? I’d be scared shitless too if I was him. The difference between him and me, however, is that when I’m scared shitless I do it anyway and damn the torpedoes. He’s not like that. He’s much ‘‘safer.’’

I understand you think I’m in denial or something, but I know my husband better than you. He is not currently coping very well with his current responsibilities, or at least, he wasn’t and feels like he is just starting to get his shit together again. I trust him when he tells me he wants children someday because I trust him. You might have been in relationships or seen relationships where people just say what their partner wants to hear, but that doesn’t happen in mine. If it did, this thread wouldn’t exist.

This is a difficult situation because we are currently really at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of what we want, and both positions are understandable. My priority is not to badger him into seeing things my way; my priority is keeping this relationship together.

163

I’m sending positive thoughts your way that everything will work out for the best, olives. Five years doesn’t seem that long to me, but then again, baby-making is still kind of a long-term goal for me since I don’t even have a real BF right now. But if I were married, my clock would probably be on accelerated pace because the conditions would be riper for making a family. So I can’t blame you for feeling so ready.

I think its unfair for anyone to assume that your hubby is stalling because he doesn’t want kids. We don’t know enough about him. If he says he does and you love him, put your faith in that for now. It will do your marriage no good if you start second-guessing everything he says about his feelings in this regard and start fishing for reassurances at every turn (not saying you’re doing that now).

That said, if five years feels too long of a compromise to you, tell him that. A major compromise like this should be acceptable (if not ideal) to both parties, not just one. If you feel like you got the shitty end of the stick, try to negotiate a new deal. It seems that he suggested 5 years because you’ll both would have been working for at least 2 years. What is the significance of 2 years, though? Seems a bit arbitrary.

That he’s persuing this PhD despite all the unpleasant stress it is causing is surprising given his uncertainty that he wants to even be in academia (or so it seems from your posts). I dunno, makes me think that the subject that really might be worth discussing is whether all this soul-draining, life-pausing work really worth it? Is delaying parenthood for 5 years worth the chance that he won’t even like the fruition of all this drudgery, which means back to the drawing board? Hopefully that’s not too much food for thought to add to your overflowing plate.

164

He’s getting his PhD in 3 years, but won’t be ready for 2 years after that?

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After he finishes his dissertation he has internship year, which is regular work at reduced pay, then he will hopefully get an actual job. So I guess he was thinking he would have a year of full-time real work under his belt and then he’d be ready. He suggested it might be as soon as internship year but didn’t want to make any commitments because he’s not prepared to do so.

He’s just really overwhelmed right now, feels like he can barely manage what he’s got on his plate, I don’t think he honestly knows when he will feel like he has things under control and so gave the longest estimate possible. One thing he mentioned a few minutes ago is that he feels like whatever is going on in his home life always affects his ability to do his job. Like he can’t concentrate the next day if we got into an argument the day before, or if I’m sick or sad or something. I don’t really have that problem, so I didn’t realize it was something he struggled with.

It’s kind of funny what ninnies we are about our relationship. After eight years of bliss we’re on the verge of panic because we haven’t been getting along for :eek: a whole week. I guess that’s good about our relationship, but it would be nice if we had some kind of perspective. Like, oh, we fought before and we got through it. With the exception of a brief period of financial misery prior to our marriage, we’ve never really had any significant serious disagreements until now. It makes it harder to keep things in perspective, you know. Harder to tell a serious problem from just a normal part of any relationship.

166

Taking the time to finish his degree and then find a decent job before starting a family doesn’t sound ridiculous. It sounds responsible. Olives, imo, the thing you need to discuss with a counselor is how your own plans did a complete 180, how you went from wanting a degree and a career to wanting a baby and a stay-at-home life, right damn now. A year, having a baby was a long-term goal. Now it’s threatening your relationship. How can you be sure that next year, having baby won’t be displaced by some other obsession?

JMO, of course. I could be entirely off base.

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Yeah, I think you are entirely off base. My plans did not do a complete 180 at all. I never gave up having a career or a degree (I’m going to graduate this Spring.) We talked about SAHM for the first year, not forever. This is a pretty long-term goal I’ve had, I just got tired of waiting.

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This keeps coming up in this thread…when does he think/know that X will happen? When will he feel in control? When will he feel ready? When, when when?

Honestly, can you answer that about any of the things that you are dealing with personally? Could you have ever answered that? To use a cruel example, and I apologize for this, but when will you be over the intimacy issues you mentioned? If he asked you that - and it seems to me that intimacy is easier to deal with than a child - how would you answer? Could you?

I think, if you are going to go the counselling route, that it’s something you two might want to look at. You are both planners and like to have some sense of control over your lives, but this when? when? when? isn’t doing anyone any good. It’s unreasonable to ask someone what the future will bring - how can he possibly know?

This isn’t fair. Your long-term goal, which your husband was in agreement with, suddenly became now, and you’re tired of waiting for something that you’d both agreed wouldn’t even be happening for some time to come.

You’ve made comments about having waiting a long time, about waiting for life to begin, and apparently to you that means (in part) having a child.

Which makes me wonder what you’ve been doing for the past 8 years?

Life isn’t a child. Life isn’t what you’ll do an a day-to-day basis once you move to Chicago. Life isn’t what comes after a MSW, or after a PhD. Life isn’t spreadsheets and planning what you’ll do 4.356 years from now.

THIS IS LIFE. Learn, laugh, cry, shop, eat, fuck…that’s life.

It is what you make of it, and I know you’ve made a lot more of your life than your history suggests you should have - and I’m so amazed and impressed by you and I give you a bazillion credits for that. I can understand your impatience and your frustration and your sadness, but I feel like you’re so wrapped up in the future that you aren’t even able to appreciate where you are now. When you first moved to start grad school you loved the town, you loved the jogging trail behind your place, and I seem to recall a great little market, or maybe I’m confusing you with someone else, but either way, there is LIFE to be lived right where you are.

And this is coming from a bit of a hermit watching football, drinking beer and posting to the SDMB on a Saturday night! This is my life…and I’m ok with that! :wink:

Thank You - An Update Thread
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If someone really wants to make something happen, they do not put it on the shelf for five years before even considering doing what it takes to attain that goal.

Conversely, people who do not really want to do something often postpone the decision, or make excuses for why they can’t, or set unrealistic conditions on the decision that are designed to fail.

He owes it to you to be very honest with you about what he really feels about this issue.

If he really thinks he might want kids at some point, it needs to be a conversation that is revisited with some regularity, as your lives progress. Academics I know with kids (I know many) did a lot of proactive planning years in advance to ensure that they could make kids happen alongside their careers.

Expecting that things will fall magically into place at exactly five years from now is a recipe for disaster.

I am afraid he does not really want children, and is postponing telling you that because he can’t bear the idea of breaking your heart. If the real thought in his mind now is, “I am not sure I will ever be ready for kids,” he owes it to you to tell you that. I don’t think he would do that consciously. But lots of people unconsciously hurt the ones they love.

170

I agree, but I really think you guys are jumping the gun on this. He’s really overwhelmed right now. I agree his 5-year plan is a little too cautious and controlling, but being a cautious and controlling person myself, I have a feeling that when he gets a better handle on things, especially given that I doubt **olives **is just going to let this drop for the next half-decade, he’ll have more confidence in his ability to handle having a kid and be ready to take the plunge sooner than he thinks right now.

Yeah, this could all mean that he doesn’t really want kids, but I see no reason to assume that at this point (much less hammer the possibility in), especially since **olives **is in a much better position to know and doesn’t consider that to be plausible.

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I don’t assume anything. But it is definitely within the realm of possibility.

I see olives insisting again and again that she knows her husband and his motives. But do we ever really know ourselves 100%, let alone others? Wasn’t she recently blindsided by him? It is worth considering that it is possible that he is engaging in a pattern of avoidance? I think so.

My post was intended to point out where his actions resemble people trying to avoid a hard decision/action. Food for thought. Not to say that I absolutely believe he is jerking her around.

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(missed the edit, sorry)

And mnemosyne, you’re right, but you’re also a little wrong, I think. Of course the present is where we live, but our desires for the future direct the choices we make in the present and a little planning and forethought is essential.

I think the key, as with many things, is to strike a healthy balance between the two, so that you do really live and enjoy your life, but also take steps to try to direct your future so that the upcoming present is one you’ll find fulfilling. (Plus, personally, I find working towards my future goals to be exciting and enjoyable.) Only **olives **knows if she’s managing to do that, and I think her eyes have been opened on the subject.
One last thing: your husband should tell you himself if this is beneficial or not, olives, but being similar to him, if it were me, I would find it very helpful to be pushed/challenged a little on the subject (of having kids) once the stress has become more manageable. I know my cautiousness/controlling tendencies hold me back, and sometimes I need a little outside pressure to overcome them. I do, however, also tend to resent the person pushing me, so I think counseling could be a very good idea if you don’t want that dynamic in your relationship (I honestly don’t know how it would effect a marriage - I mainly just get pushed by *my *shrink :)).

Edit: I feel a little strange responding to this stuff on your behalf, olives. I hope I haven’t overstepped any boundaries.

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In my opinion, five years is a ridiculous amount of time. My life five years ago in no way resembles my life now. I can’t imagine what my life is going to be like five years in the future. Anything can happen! Hell, I’m hoping to start a family before five years, and I don’t even have an SO, much less an advanced degree and a job.

I think it’s a little absurd to think that you guys have any idea what your lives with be like at that point. There is no way he can say with any certainty “Okay, at that point I’ll be ready.” There are a million things that could come up. You just can’t count on the perfect moment.

Frankly, it sounds like he needs to rethink his career path. If it’s making him stressed and miserable and disrupting everything else in his life, maybe he ought to be doing something else. If he is looking at three years in the prime of his life in utter misery, what is the point? And what makes him think it’s going to get any better in the future?

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Ok. I had the wrong impression I guess. Good luck.

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I agree, it does come down to a balancing act. I just think, from Sr. Olives’ perspective, that things have probably seemed very off balance lately due to his schooling and the rather recent talk of accelerating the baby plans have probably added more instability to something that he might have been feeling he was beginning to get the hang of.

olives’ desire to have a child, either through conception or through adoption, are perfectly valid, and it is perfectly valid to have an increase in desire and to want to re-evaluate the choices she and her husband have made so far in life in light of how she now feels compared to a year ago.

What I don’t think is valid is trying to adjust expectations based on a fixed time frame. Counting the months to September, or saying 5 years, or whatever isn’t going to work; it will (and is) make her resentful and make him feel even more destabilized.

They need to find a way to work towards this goal that works for both of them, and what that means isn’t saying “by X date we will get there” but it means that they will spend the next 5 years working towards various milestones, and if they happen to achieve them all in 1 or 2 years then so much the better.

Solve the intimacy issues as best as possible. Find a stable routine for Sr. Olives regarding his education, and see if perhaps he can compromise by choosing internships closer to home (even if they are less prestigious), or stretching it out an extra year in order to reduce the work load, or whatever small elements can be adjusted in the long run. Solve whatever elements about your current town make you unhappy - moving closer to family will help (and trust me, I’ve been there on this one) but the rest of your day-to-day life has to be something you’re happy with and that’s something you can work on right where you are.

Though through all this I also think that **Sr. Olives/B] needs to learn better coping mechanisms and needs to compromise a little on what he expects out of his current career path. If he’s not sure now that he wants to stay in academia, is it possible for him to take a year or two off before his PhD to work a “real world” job, start a family, and return later for the doctorate?

I guess I just don’t like timelines, though I recognize that olives has said that this works for her and her husband and clearly we don’t all think and behave the same. I just think I’d be more stressed out about the whole thing if I had to adhere to one. I’ll be 30 when I graduate (undergrad!) and I want to start a career that will be difficult, with a career goal that I can only hope to reach by the time I’m 45-50, if everything goes well. And I want kids. Do I start working and delay kids a few more years, or do I have kids and delay my career goals a few more years? Right now either path is available to me, and my husband has changes to his career that he wants to explore, and other than saying “let’s see what the next 2-3 years brings” we aren’t committing to anything. It’s too easy to be disappointed or feel like we’ve failed if we do.

As a bit of an aside, I’m a little curious about materity/paternity leave in the US (and I know it’s highly variable). I’m not sure of the details, but here parents have a right to a combined 52 weeks (at reduced or no pay) of parental leave following the birth (or adoption I think) of a child, 18 of which can only be used by the mother. It’s interesting that you talk of spending a year as a SAHM when that’s the standard in Québec (assuming the parents can afford the reduced income). What’s typical in the US?

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[QUOTE=mnemosyne]
Which makes me wonder what you’ve been doing for the past 8 years?
[/QUOTE]

The short answer is: going to school.

The long answer is… a very long answer.

If you understood where I started in life vs. where I am now, you would see why I find it difficult to accept the judgment that I’m an impulsive unstable person disconnected from reality. There is nothing I have – not education, not marriage, not personal happiness-- that I didn’t work extremely hard for. Nothing in my life has ever come easy. And I’m okay with that.

There was a time when I needed to focus only on myself, when I needed to parent myself and give myself the constant love and validation I never had. That time is over. I’m ready to give back. I mean that both in terms of social work career and in terms of having a family. It doesn’t have to be all about me any more. I don’t really want it to be. I want it to be about my community and my family. So if this is a change at all, it’s a positive change, a change stemming from personal growth. Part of the problem I’m facing right now is that I’m not entirely sure the best way to make that transition. At a time where I finally feel ready to reach out to other people and become a part of a community, I’m feeling more isolated than ever.

My husband also busted his ass for his education. The simple difference between him and I is that his hard work hasn’t yet paid off and won’t for some time. He isn’t to the ‘‘family/career’’ phase yet. That’s just how it is. I understand and respect that and don’t want to pressure him into a timeline or anything. He showed me incredible loyalty and I can only do the same for him. I’m just trying to deal with my own disappointment and frustration in a way that doesn’t damage our relationship.

[QUOTE=even sven]

Frankly, it sounds like he needs to rethink his career path. If it’s making him stressed and miserable and disrupting everything else in his life, maybe he ought to be doing something else. If he is looking at three years in the prime of his life in utter misery, what is the point? And what makes him think it’s going to get any better in the future?
[/QUOTE]

I wonder this too and I’ve discussed it with him more than once. He insists he is starting to not be miserable any more, and he is starting to get a grip on things. I don’t know how long that will last, but he seems pretty certain that eventually he will learn to deal with the stress.

I dunno, I’m thinking they should put ‘‘graduate school adjustment disorder’’ in the DSM-V because what he’s going through seems incredibly typical to the common Ph.D. experience. It’s like this gauntlet of misery and insecurity for a lot of students, and particularly in clinical psychology the expectations and pressures are extraordinary and unreasonable. That starts with just the applications process, where the nationwide acceptance rate is 4%. He applied to 15 schools and got into one. It only gets more competitive from there. I know he wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t absolutely necessary for the career he wants.

[QUOTE=mnemosyne]

I agree, it does come down to a balancing act. I just think, from Sr. Olives’ perspective, that things have probably seemed very off balance lately due to his schooling and the rather recent talk of accelerating the baby plans have probably added more instability to something that he might have been feeling he was beginning to get the hang of.
[/QUOTE]

Yes, this is exactly right. If I could summarize the conversations we’ve had in the last week about what happened, it would be this.

I completely agree with you on trying to set a timeline. I told him to forget about the timeline and we’d just focus on the present, and then next thing I knew he was telling me a timeline. :smack:

As always I appreciate your input.

177

Sorry I am so late to the party, but I just wanted to make a couple of comments:

  1. There is never a good time to have a baby. My wife and I played this game for several years: let’s wait until we have some more money. Let’s wait until I am settled in this new job. Let’s wait until we can afford a bigger place. Etc… None of this stuff matters in the slightest, there is always a reason to put it off and none of the reasons really matter. Just my opinion.

  2. I had my first child when I started the Ph.D. program in E.E. at the University of Colorado. My wife was working and this actually worked out great because my schedule was so flexible. During the first semester we had child care on Tuesday and Thursday while I would be at school taking courses. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I would be at home with the baby doing homework, housework, etc… At night, I would be in charge of the kid unit 2 am or so (and I would sometimes just stay up this late studying) and my wife was in charge from 2 to 7-8 when she left for work. I would sleep until 9 when our daughter let me. My wife took the weekends and I spent a lot of time at school on saturday and sunday.
    This arrangement was excellent. I got to spend a lot of time with my daughter and it did not really affect my studies. I was unable to hold and RA position or anything this semester, but that was a small price to pay. After this first semester I slowly ramped up my involvement at school, taking more classes, spending more time doing research, etc… When she was about 18 months old, I was full time at the university with a near-normal schedule.
    This arrangement was much better (at least in my mind) than what our friends went through when they were both working. They had much less flexibility and were forced to put their children into full time day care when they were 6 months or even younger (actually, typically at the 3 month mark). Nothing wrong with this, but I really liked spending 3 days a week with my daughter, my wife spending 2 days a week, and only needing child care assistance two days a week.

  3. Hi Opal.

Anyway, good luck.

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I could have written this, word for word. I can only suggest a few things I’ve come across that might fit the bill: my Unitarian Universalist church (I belong but don’t go regularly and haven’t for a while, though I always mean to) which seems to be an incredibly warm, inclusive, and active community; a local knitting group that meets twice a month (of course you could substitute any craft or hobby for knitting and probably find one); and if you’re into history and dressing up, the local SCA group seemed to me to be a good community too. My local group only meets regularly (outside of events) once a month but it extends beyond just the SCA events. They have get-togethers outside of the SCA and are always pitching in for one another, it seems (I’m getting this from the yahoo group mainly - I haven’t been to an actual in-person thing in a while).

(Don’t take my not jumping in to participate in all those communities as lack of quality. :slight_smile: I have other issues that are holding me back.)

179

If we had waited until we were ready, we’d still be childless. I suspect that is true for most people.

180

I’ve more or less followed your threads for as long as you’ve been on these boards, so while I can’t relate to a lot of it, I do understand it somewhat. I don’t think you’re impulsive or unstable or disconnected or anything like that.

I think you’ve worked hard to reach a milestone in your personal development, and that milestone turned out to be a bitch that tripped you as you ran past :smiley: Meanwhile, dear husband was thinking about taking another road entirely and didn’t realize yours might be shorter. Life is stupid like that.

This makes me really sad. I don’t know what to say.

Life is stupid like that too. Let’s just say the timeline is rather vague and fluid and is more a doodle than a finished painted masterpiece, and it might turn out to be a picture of a dog, or maybe of the CN Tower.

Were I in your shoes, I think I would have bowed out and asked for this to be closed a long time ago. You are unbelievably receptive to input and criticism and I love how you’re willing to take everything and examine it before throwing it out if it turns out to be non-applicable. While I’m sitting here telling you what you should do, I kind of wish I were more like you in many ways! Once again, isn’t life stupid? :cool: