Health
‘He doesn’t want to have sex and I really want kids’
Tuesday, June 7, 2016
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TJ’s husband doesn’t want children and has
even gone off sex for the last eight months – she asks our resident
therapist Sally Brown for advice on this complicated matter
Hi Sally,
I have been with my husband for 13 years now
(married for 7) and generally things have been good. He had a daughter
(now 15) when we got together and I have been a part of her life and
have loved and helped raise her (on our days) since. We have a home
together, dogs, the whole package. What we don’t have is a child of our
own together. When we first started out, we talked about kids. He said
he wanted one more. I wanted two, but with my step daughter, I was
willing to compromise on just the one. The thing is, he wanted to wait.
Wait for me to get a driving license (I didn’t really need to drive at
the time) then wait for me to get a better job, wait until we bought a
house..wait wait wait… We have done all of the things on his big stupid list. Still I was waiting for him. He is now 44 and I am 34.
We have gone up to seven or eight months without having sex (Super frustrating by the way!)
Our friends and family constantly ask when we are
having a kid. He tells them we are trying, which we are not. We rarely
have sex at all, and have gone up to seven or eight months without.
(Super frustrating by the way!) He had one conversation when he told me
he wasn’t really interested in sex anymore, and that he found me too
clingy, but he still loved me. I didn’t speak to him for around two
weeks after that (I don’t think he even noticed) then we had another row
when he admitted he had issues with ED
I barely spoke to him for two weeks after that. We
were in the car and he asked me what I was thinking about and I had had
enough. I unloaded all of my thoughts and feelings on him. He hadn’t
even noticed that I had not been talking to him! Even my mom and sister
knew something was wrong five minutes into seeing us, but he didn’t. By
the end of it, he admitted that he had been avoiding me because he was
embarrassed about some ED issues. I asked why he didn’t just say that,
instead of making me out to be some monster.
He promised to work on our issues and to go to the
doctor. He never went. He did, however make an effort at the
relationship. Things got a bit better, but then got stagnant. I was
getting frustrated again, so I wrote him a letter detailing my feelings
because when I talk with him I can’t stop crying and don’t make my point
clear sometimes. It was pretty much the same as I had said a few weeks
before, but he took it more seriously. He has made a huge effort to be
more open and affectionate and communicative towards me. I appreciate
it, but I’m feeling once bitten-twice shy.
He never went to the doctor and I have been
periodically asking him if he has an appointment or if he wants me to
make one. He said he would do it but ended up asking me to make one for
him a couple days ago (mind you, it’s been like eight months).
I’m worried that he’s not going to be able to have
any more kids after making me wait 13 years. I feel bitter and like I
have been wasting my window of opportunity for children.
I love him and our life-generally, but my heart has
been broken and I think that staying with him will end any chance of
kid(s) for me. We worked so hard to build this life, but I think about
what it would be like to start over every day.
I need some help deciding what to do. If you have any good advice, it would be much appreciated.
Thanks for your time,
TJ
TJ
Dear TJ
I wonder if you have ever heard of the ‘sunk cost
bias’? It’s the psychological term for throwing ‘good money after bad’,
and it applies to any kind of investment – money, time, effort or
emotions. Once we’ve invested in something, we are reluctant to give up
on it, even if it’s not working, because we feel that doing so would
negate the investment we’ve made so far.
The sunk cost bias makes us watch a terrible movie
to the end because we’re already an hour in, or stick out a miserable
week at a holiday resort because we’ve paid for it. But it’s a fallacy,
because you’ve made the investment and lost the money (or time) whatever
you do. Enduring misery for longer does not get your investment back.
I think you’re caught in this thinking trap. Here’s
what the logical part of you knows – staying with your partner greatly
reduces your chances of ever having a baby, something that matters very
much to you. You feel heartbroken, frustrated, ignored, misunderstood,
and rejected by this man. You think about what it would be like to start
over every day. And yet, you hang on because you’ve ‘worked so hard to
build this life’.
Short of actually cutting off his penis, he couldn’t do much more to ensure you don’t get pregnant.
I wonder if you know, in your heart of hearts, that
your husband is unlikely to change his mind about having a baby? He’s
throwing whatever barrier he can get his hands on in the way of it
happening – you getting a driving license, then a better job, then the
move into a new house. Now that he’s run out of reasons to delay, he’s
physically withdrawn sex, and developed an erectile dysfunction problem.
Short of actually cutting off his penis, he couldn’t do much more to
ensure you don’t get pregnant.
But there’s a voice in you that still says,
‘Maybe’, that holds onto the hope he will change his mind, come home one
day, scoop you in his arms and say, ‘Let’s make a baby!’ And why
shouldn’t you hope – after all, you have built a life together, a home
and dogs that you love. Dismantling that life would be scary, with no
guarantee that it would bring the result you want – a happy relationship
and children. There is no question that leaving your husband would be a
gamble. You have a relatively short window in which to recover from
your marriage break-up, meet someone else, then get the relationship to a
point where making a baby would be a responsible thing to do. But it’s
not impossible (and I say that as someone who was very single at 35, but met a wonderful man at age 36, then had two babies in quick succession before I hit 40).
it’s perfectly possible to love someone very much, and still not want to have a baby with them, even when you know that denying them that chance will break their heart.
I am not saying that leaving your husband is the
right thing to do, or that he doesn’t love you. He has recently made a
huge effort to improve your relationship which is his way of
communicating his commitment to you. But it’s perfectly possible to love
someone very much, and still not want to have a baby with them, even
when you know that denying them that chance will break their heart.
He’s already had a child, so he’s under no illusion of how all-consuming
having a new baby is. I wonder whether at 44, with his daughter now a
teenager, he’s longing for some time for himself, for life to become
easier, or for the headspace to focus on his career or interests. I
wonder how long it has been since you were able to set your anger and
resentment to one side, and tried to step into your husband’s shoes, and
look at the situation from his point of view? From your brief
description of his behaviour, it sounds like he could be suffering from
depression – he’s so withdrawn that he doesn’t notice you haven’t talked
to him for two weeks, he feels overwhelmed by your needs (calling you
‘clingy’), he lies to evade questions, and he has experienced ED problems.
He must feel very trapped. He knows that if he came out and told you
that he doesn’t want to have a baby, he’d risk losing you, so he delays
and dodges instead. Not wanting to have a baby doesn’t make him a bad
man. It just means he wants a different future from you.
Getting your husband to go to the doctor is a great
first step, and the doctor should explore the issue of depression with
him. Now, could you get him to go to couples counselling? You both need a
place where you can communicate with each other honestly, without
feeling attacked or defensive.
It’s time to stop fixating on that ‘sunk cost’ –
those ‘wasted’ 13 years. Those years have gone, whether you stay with
your husband or leave him. What counts now is the future. Your vision of
a happy, fulfilled, purposeful life centres around having a child, but
it seems that your husband’s doesn’t. You both need to understand the
reasons he feels like this. It may be that he has fears that your
relationship will change once the baby is born (is this what happened in
the relationship with the mother of his child?). Facing his fears and
reservations may help him overcome them, so he feels ready to have a
baby. But it may also reinforce his conviction that he doesn’t want
another child. Either way, you will know, and your waiting game will be
over.
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