Agreed. That said, it’s entirely possible that the OP and his wife did discuss it before marriage. The sense I have is that the reality of their living situation once he was finally able to have his wife move to the UK led the OP to decide (probably a bit unilaterally) “yes, but not now.”
The OP has stated in clear unequivocal language that he wants kids as part of his marriage to her. The almost-stated sorta-implicit part is that will be after he can afford their current house and pay for kids on only one job.
What he’s been utterly silent about is how, why, and most importantly when, he expects his income to rise that drastically with the job(s) and occupational skills he has. In some jobs / occupations / life situations such pay increases would be normal and reliably expected; in others unheard-of.
I mentioned in post #47 a situation with an American co-worker of mine and his Filipina wife. Quoting the relevant bit of that post for context:
I will suggest that perhaps something similar is going on between our OP here and his Vietnamese wife. He’s living below what he thought would be his station at this point in his life and feels utterly strapped. Living in the exact same house with access to the exact same amount of money she feels like she’s/they’re so rich that kids would be a trivial expense. Not a backbreaker like he feels it would be.
I very carefully said “feels”, not “thinks” in the above paragraph because most of this stuff is subconscious.
He feels they can’t afford them yet. She feels they can afford them now, and have been for ??? months or years.
On a related note, somebody upthread made a comment that appears in most of these “Are we ready for kids yet?” threads. In paraphrase:
Nobody is ever ready for kids practically or financially. If you wait for that, you’ll never be ready enough so you’ll never have kids. Just ignore all that, have the kids now, and you’ll make it work somehow.
Which isn’t utter poppycock, but probably fails a lot of people when they try it. I’d also suggest that that’s more of a working class sentiment. Which may not be the OP’s situation.
A sort of bottom line from me …
Where the OP and the relationship is today, even a lottery win of a couple million pounds would not necessarily fix the relationship. Even as it conclusively answered the question of “Can we afford kids now?”.
The OP and the wife need to be working hard on jointly deciding if this is salvageable, then splitting or salvaging as the case may be.
I mentioned in my first post in the thread, #2, that I’m separated and getting divorced. Once I announced to wife that I was done unless we both were willing and able to make major changes in our baseline behavior towards each other I let that sit for a couple days while we were both pretty much home all day. No shouting, no throwing things, just both feeling like our dog had died unexpectedly. We did have a couple of civil, albeit loaded, long talks about our respective perspectives on the situation. Which unsurprisingly were miles apart on everything except we were unanimous that we were each miserable.
Two days later neither of us had made the slightest move towards discussing actual change, much less implementing it. At the end of that third day is when I left for a hotel and said I’d call her to make a plan to begin separating my stuff from her stuff. Which was accomplished over the next 5 days after that. Again without rancor; just resignation to the obvious reality that up until a week ago had dared not speak its name.
OP: you need to shit or get off this pot.
But she’s already 32. When the fuck is he going to feel ready? Her biological clock really is ticking. Hanging onto her and denying her a chance at the babies she wants is really cruel. I’m sure she feels like he’s lying to her at this point, and just stringing her along.
No, don’t bring kids into the relationship if it’s broken. That’s a terrible idea. And also, if the relationship wasn’t broken before, withholding sex is a good way to break it.
In case that’s not clear, either start working on kids or get divorced. And make the decision quickly.
Agree completely. As usual where your posts are involved.
Given the very likely reality of his income trajectory, he will never feel financially ready, even if his wife’s fertility/safety clock had 3 decades yet to run.
So he needs to man up and admit that to her and to himself. And do that now. That’s my overarching point.
If you really, really want to make sure you don’t make babby there’s only one way. “Almost 100%” doesn’t suffice if you want to guarantee there’s no kid.
We’re missing the big Her side.
She’s not gonna agree to birth control if she wants babies now!
He obviously knows this. This is why there’s no sex happening.
At any rate I’d recommend a visit to a family physician for complete physicals for both parties for her maternal health and his mental health.