Welcome! /r/MadeMeSmile is a place to share things that made you smile or brightened up your day. A generally uplifting subreddit.
Feeding their best life.
this is a community like r/AmITheAsshole except unlike that subreddit here you can post interpersonal conflicts, anything that's AITA but is not allowed there even posting about Scar from the lion king and trying to convince redditors that he was not the AH. rules: don't berate others and no pornography we have children here
As the title says I (M44) always planned on having kid(s) with my wife (F43). We have a video we recorded together for our future children when we were younger. I didn't want to start until I was absolutely sure we were financially stable enough to support a kid. I can distinctly remember when that day came about 12 years ago. Suddenly she wasn't so sure which came as a complete shock to me.
After much conversation she agreed I'd make a great father and we could finally stop using condoms (yes, they were always required prior to that). Now it seemed like she started keeping track of her cycles but I think we only tried (on the proper day) once or twice in a 2 year period (I feel like the keeping track she did was to make sure we DIDN'T do it on those "certain days")
So here's where stuff gets really messed up: spurred on by our Dogs coming demise I started researching why we never ended up having kids and came across some texts (>10k+) during that same time period where she had a 2-3 year affair. It was the guy that actually broke it off with her in the end because he knew she was married and didn't want to be a home wrecker. This made her intensly angry at me for 2 years! I had no idea why she was so mad. Honestly, now I wish she would have left me for him so I could at least have a chance at finding a women that truly loves me enough to have our baby.
Did I mention that she cut me off of all sex since the affair (while still being intimate with him for over another 6 months) and it'll be 10 YEARS this August since we made love (she claimed it was due to pain but never went to doctors about it). Not even a handy on my Birthday no matter how many times I asked.
Only recently after all this did we finally figure out what may be the worst part of this: she has bad cptsd from childhood which was erroneously attributed to agoraphobia and social anxiety for over a decade.
So I have 2 choices: 1. Stick with the women I've loved for over 25 years and help her recover from the cptsd or 2. Find a women who loves me (and i love her) enough to have kids in very short order.
So reddit, AITAH?
Edit: Well, I had no idea this post would get so many replies. Thank you, kind redditors, for reinforcing what I figured you'd all say. Sigh. I'll read all the messages and reply when I'm back home in a couple of hours.
Edit2: So I'm seeing lots of questions about why I didn't do more during the last 10 years. I've answered some of that in the comments (see below), but I think it's important I point out that I was trying to fill that hole in my heart for kids with pets. We lost our 12yo cat summer before last, and our 8yo shepherd needed surgery last summer that got botched and left her fecally incontinent. She's rapidly losing weight and requires lots and lots of help. Her time is also limited. What I paid between the two of them in vet bills would probably be enough to send a kid to most state schools for 4 years. I guess I finally came to the conclusion that in almost no way are pets the same as kids and sometimes with the dog ... I just can't help but wonder why that much (usually gross) effort wasn't going towards raising the little one(s) I'd always envisioned as part of my life.