TL;DR at the bottom.
I (24f) am going through the legal elements of a divorce but have been separated for a few months now. I loved my ex husband, but before marrying I made it clear I didn't want kids and didn't want him to wait or hope for me to change my mind. He agreed and told me he would be happy with me even if I never wanted kids.
Just under a year ago he sat me down and told me he had been realizing more and more that he changed his mind and thinks he does want kids. I asked how long this had been happening, he said about a year. I already knew where this was headed, but thought I owed it to us to at least try. Months of therapy and thinking and talking and waiting for him to come to the same conclusion I had brought up to him and accepted pretty early on and we finally decided mutually that we would have to divorce. I didn't want him to stay with me and risk having any resentment towards me and feel unfulfilled, and I dont want kids. I don't know if I'll want them in the future, I don't think I will, but he wanted them ASAP so it was irrelevant anyways.
At least the separation/divorce has been amicable, but it was (and sometimes still is) incredible difficult emotionally. I'm grateful that his family didn't guilt me when they learned of the reason for the divorce, though the reason he gave for me being childfree was medical reasons which is only kind of true. Still, at least I didn't get any flak for it from anybody.
The guy I'm talking to now is vehemently childfree and it's great being able to freely make faces about or feel annoyed by children, not want to go to baby showers or baby birthday parties, and all other things that I used to feel alone in with my ex husband (and made me wonder for a while if he was truly childfree like me). Not to say you have to dislike children to be childfree, but I would often get a weird look about my attitude and discomfort around children.
I was never active on the subreddit but I'm making more of an effort to be active in the communities on Lemmy, so I guess hi everyone! How are you? Anybody here with a similar story?
TL;DR My husband changed his mind and I didn't so now I'm a 24 year old divorcée introducing myself and my story being childfree :)
I'm happy for you, congratulations :)
Do you mind sharing some of the pros and cons when you compare to others in your state of life with children?
Its sorta hard to. This is the path we took. Initially due to economic considerations and eventually due to environmental. Pros I guess is you won't have to watch your children and grandchildren have a worse life than you which was worse than your parents. Cons is you can't take advantage of them to make your old age a bit easier.
Thanks for sharing; and yes, of course without having lived both it's difficult. I hope you both find ease as you get older even without children :)
I hope so to but life is easier at times and more difficult. Im a believer in euthanasia rights and I hope those develop and are there for us so that when life gets to difficult we can have a nice and dignified pain free ending. Granted that will be hard if one wants or needs to go before the other. Im older though and women tend to live longer so likely I will have the easier end of that. Don't get me wrong im not racing for that. Even better would be some scifi level medicine developing.
Yes it's something to think about for sure. Then I hope even through tough times you find ways to smile 😊
oh yeah we do. Maybe im painting to bleak a picture. All our parents passed and we are not thrilled with the endings. We still have a few decades of ups and downs ourselves.