I [29M] don’t want kids. My GF [27F] has always wanted kids but is willing to give that up to be together. I’m not sure how to feel about it

My girlfriend and I have been dating for about 3 years, and living together for about 2 of those years. Our relationship has been largely loving and positive and we have always been able to work through problems as they come up. Of course we have had to work on our relationship over the years but would say it’s been a happy 3 years for us.

Within the last year of our relationship we have started to think more about our future. The biggest topic is marriage and starting a family (not soon but at some point). Going into the relationship we both knew that I was not at a place where I could say whether or not I saw kids in my future. Whenever we talked about getting married we would avoid the topic of kids entirely and even when we did discuss it, it was just me saying “I don’t think I’m ready to decide that yet, maybe someday”.

After seeing some of my friends and siblings have kids recently, I’ve started to move from uncertain to fairly confident that I would like to have a childfree life. I realized how much I prioritize autonomy, freedom, travel, financial stability, cleanliness, time to develop and pursue creative hobbies, etc. I can’t fathom losing all of those things for 18+ years of my life. I can’t rule out that I’ll change my mind in 5 or 6 years but I can definitely say that it’s not a milestone I’m working towards even a little bit.

This past month we recently started having what I would describe as normal relationship hardships (the kind that we have worked through before, e.g. our finances, home labor, etc). When I thought about the kind of work we’d be putting into out relationship, I realized I wanted to make sure we were headed in the same direction, otherwise what was the point.

Last week I brought up with her that I was fairly sure I did not want kids and was concerned what it meant for us. While she was very understanding of my reasons, she let me know that she is not on the same page and does have a desire to have a family. She wants the house, kids, birthday parties, PTA meetings, little league, etc. Where I only see costs and stress, she sees all the benefits that make it worth it, which is the difference between us I guess.

It looked like we were heading towards accepting that our relationship had an expiration date since it seemed like an irreconcilable difference. Yesterday she brought this up again and said that after some thought she would be fine with not having kids if it meant we could still be together. She said how she could try to figure out how to satisfy that maternal instinct in other ways. And (half seriously) said if she really wanted a child late in life we could divorce and she could adopt a child by herself.

Although this makes me a little happy since it aligns with what I want in life much better, it still worries me that this is just wishful thinking on her part out of fear of losing each other and that it will become a huge recurring problem during the course of our relationship.

She also put me in a position I don’t feel comfortable with in that she said that I’m the only person she could see having a family with realistically (even though she is only 27). In her mind if we split up, she won’t have a desire to start a family with anyone else so she might as well stay with me even though I don’t want kids since from her point of view she won’t have another option for kids anyways. I totally disagree with her reasoning, but even if she is right, I don’t like feeling like I’m totally responsible for whether she has a chance at a family and feel like I will constantly be afraid she will start to resent me for it no matter how much she reassures me she won’t.

I expressed my concerns about this discussion to her and she started getting defensive that by even considering that this could be a deal breaker I was “choosing” not to do whatever it takes to make the relationship work, etc. I’m pretty torn up about it and not sure what to do or how to talk about it.

tl;dr I don’t want kids. My girlfriend has always wanted kids. She decided I was her only shot at kids and would rather just be with me even if it means no kids. I’m afraid she’s not being honest with herself and worried about the strain this could put on our relationship if we decide to stay together.

Submitted November 14, 2018 at 05:34PM by insideup47 https://ift.tt/2K6tR6E