Come to an agreement with my partner about having kids

Making budgets and plans, thinking of all the different possible scenarios. (What if we can’t get pregnant for some reason? How far are we willing to go to make that happen? Etc.) Not my usual style of decision-making necessarily, but this is a really big decision.

Is does seem oddly surreal, though. Wasn’t I looking for apartments on Craigslist just a few short days ago? I think I’ll need some convincing that he’s serious before I agree to stay. (After all, you could say that he has already told me what I wanted to hear once, only to back down.) I guess I need to hear a lot more about how he wants this for himself, not just for me.

Or else he has changed it. So confusing.

We’re still talking. We’ll be together, or not.

Either way, I’m making an appointment to get my IUD removed.

Perhaps I was applying too much wishful thinking to what seemed like an agreement before.

: (

I feel like I don’t have much choice but to leave.

_{[broken-hearted]}

We have something of a plan to move forward with. Practically, it’s not just one decision, but a whole series of decisions. Nonetheless, I am marking this complete for now.

The tangled knot of our feelings and dreams seems like it is starting to loosen.

Sometimes it feels like we are just going around and around endlessly in circles. I feel so exhausted and drained.

I am just trying to have faith that each time we come at it from a slightly different angle, we are changing the dialogue a little bit and one day one of us will say something that sends us down a different path.

Just to give us something to think about. Yikes! You would think this might make one less inclined to procreate, but it does provide what appear to be some valuable parenting lessons.

We got a book called Maybe Baby: 28 Writers Tell the Truth About Skepticism, Infertility, Baby Lust, Childlessness, Ambivalence, and How They Made the Biggest Decision of Their Lives to read together. We’ll see if that brings more clarity.

I got an email from an ex today. This is someone who wanted to move to California (with or without me), and I didn’t want to leave everything behind to go with him (at least not while our relationship seemed so shaky and unstable). Now it seems like we did all this pointless fighting and wailing and moaning and gnashing of teeth, when it really just boiled down to two people who wanted different things. It is so much easier to relate to him now that he lives there and he’s happy and I am doing my thing and I’m happy too; it really is for the best that we’re not together.

Wondering if this analogy applies to the discussion about children with my current partner.

But it’s a complicated issue and there are a lot of strong feelings, mixed feelings, on both sides. Neither of us wants the other to have to sacrifice dearly-held dreams in order for us to be together.

I am trying to be open to possibilities, to have faith that there are ways for us both to get what we need and want. But right now this feels like what Dr. John Gottman, author of the relationship book we’re reading right now, calls an “un-solvable problem.”

I am just hoping we can have an open and respectful dialogue, honoring both of our feelings about this issue, and make a conscious and informed decision rather than letting the decision happen to us.