Which road?

[side_show]

Thanks for the insight JL.  I definitely believe in the transformative, and I've been through more than one transformation in life so far.  I'm well due to shed my skin and become a new version of me.  I'm just not sure if parenthood is the transformation I want or not. 

Because I grew up extremely isolated - my mom didn't allow myself, my sister or my dad to have friends, and didn't have any friends herself - I basically only had the one really disturbing front row seat on what being a mother meant.  My mom hated being a mother, hated my sister and hated my dad.  She made this clear to me as her one and only "allie."  I took this lesson to heart, and genuinely accepted that motherhood was a terrible burdon and nothing else.  Now, as I see my friends, peers and sister with their own children, I see that being a mother can be joyful.  Most deeply I feared I would lose myself to motherhood, and while some of my friends have lost themselves to motherhood, both my sister and two of my closest friends are still well able to love themselves while being mothers who place high priority on their children and their famelies.  Likewise, as I've become aware of my own capacity to love and my ability to love my friends' children and my nephew, the fear that I will reject my child the way my mom did with my sister is lower.   

On the flip side, I spent the first 30 years of my life planning for a life without children.  Then again, I also planned a life that ended at around 30 in my imagination, so everything beyond 30 is wide open now.  I can be and do anything.  The one thing I know for certain is that I want a family.  Not children, but a family.  Perhaps there is a way to have a family without being a parent though.  I don't doubt it, but I'm not sure what that looks like yet, or if it's what I want.  Taking the common path would comfort a lot of people in my life - people who I currently have to fight to have keep me included in their life because I haven't had a family like they have...  I have a lot of thinking and choices to make. 

Reality is that if I want a biological child, I have a limited window for that.  Being 31 means I likely have lots of time left to live, but it means that if I want a child of my husband and I's genetic pool, the next 4 years are pivotal.  I'm getting all my geese in a row career wise and life wise to have a baby in a couple years, but I'm not yet committed to actually having a child.  Even the shift from never, ever wanting to be a mother, to the tiny crack of possibility is a massive shift for me.  With all the shit that went down (abuse wise) that I haven't processed, the next step is to get into therapy to work all that garbage out, heal from it and then decide.  I'm daunted, but I've been researching therapists and figuring out which one I want to see.  It's a scary step for me.  There's a lot of shit I didn't have to confront about my past if I wasn't going to be a parent, that I now have to face full on. 

[jay-ell]

...My mom hated being a mother, hated my sister and hated my dad.  She made this clear to me as her one and only "allie."  I took this lesson to heart, and genuinely accepted that motherhood was a terrible burdon and nothing else...There's a lot of shit I didn't have to confront about my past if I wasn't going to be a parent, that I now have to face full on. 

This is a journey you've got to take on your own, but by way of reassurance, my mother had a similar relationship with her mom. (Grandma, in turn, was raised by her father because my great-grandmother ran off with another man when my grandmother was 4, taking my grandma's half-siblings but leaving grandma behind -- how's that for emotional baggage?) My mom, though she sometimes erred on the side of over-protectiveness, was (and continues to be) a loving, caring, affectionate mother who instilled in me all the qualities I most value now that I am a parent myself.

I am trying not to try to sway you in one direction or the other, here, but I am admittedly pro-baby and horribly biased, so I hope you're taking this for what it's worth (which isn't much) and with a grain of salt.

[theinevitable]

I am majorly pro-baby, pro-cute house, pro-marriage, etc. It is maybe not very realistic the way I view these things.

[greenkoolayd]

I am majorly pro-baby, pro-cute house, pro-marriage, etc. It is maybe not very realistic the way I view these things.

'the family' is the basic unit of society, so there is nothing abnormal about seeing "the house, the family-mobile, the S.O. and kids, the job, etc." as normal.

[theinevitable]

oh, no, it isn't that I think they are normal that is weird, I just think I have a really unrealistically positive view of what these life choices will entail.

"obviously I will have an awesome job and loving, functional family and everyone will be healthy and no one will get divorced or hate each other or anything."

I dont' know. Lately the girl keeps dragging me into these weird arguments about marriage that make no sense.

1. she has her factual understanding of what "most people" do very wrong
2. looking at her family, I do not get where she is getting her weird, intensely negative impression of marriage.
3. I do not understand why I am getting antagonized about my attitude towards marriage by my girlfriend, when I am 21 years old and still in school. CHILL OUT, I WON'T TRICK YOU INTO MARRYING ME.

[side_show]

A lady saying negative things about marriage is generally just code for "don't propose to me yet.  I'll let you know when I'm ready to drop down on one knee."  There is nothing many a lady fears more than having a really awesome guy they are involved with ask her to marry him when she isn't yet ready, because the prospects are either "break the awsome guy's heart" or "dive into something you're not even sort of, mildly ready for."   Have you figured out at what point in your life you want to get engaged and then married?  You might want to open the doors of communication by letter her know what sort of rough time frame your thinking of is, that way the pressure is sort of off, and she can relax and enjoy what ever point on your time line your on.  Unless of course your time frame is within the next six months to a year.  In that case, the honesty is important, but it would mean you have very different goals and have to reexamine things seriously.

[theinevitable]

I mean, I do not think she thinks I am going to ask her to marry me.

Who knows. She gets weirdly agitated about it. Maybe I give off a crazy vibe.
I mean, I do, probably.

[AugustWest]

Smells, you would be such a great mom.

I am trying not to try to sway you in one direction or the other, here, but I am admittedly pro-baby and horribly biased, so I hope you're taking this for what it's worth (which isn't much) and with a grain of salt.

Uh, this.

[Doc]

what sort of rough time frame your thinking of is, that way the pressure is sort of off, and she can relax and enjoy what ever point on your time line your on.  Unless of course your time frame is within the next six months to a year

This is an idea I've come across before and don't totally understand. How can you plan when you want to get married before you meet the person you want to marry? Trying to timetable True Love like something that can only lead to bad and sad places.

I feel at the moment that I haven't taken enough 'big swings' in my life, to use 'smet's wording. I'm not exactly heading down a conventional path, I've gone to uni, got a job for a couple of years and almost got married. Then I threw that all over the side to go back and do something new with my life and at this point I'm not planning on marriage or anything anytime soon and my new career should give me freedom to do a lot of cool stuff. At the same time I don't exactly do anything particularly crazy in my day to day life. We'll see how we go I guess.

[Drygioni]

thre path of artleast eeasistance.

[Drygioni]

aLs os tis ais all bullshit about differenat paths. Eveyrone atkes teh patha they want tod and that is the bes all and end all. Bullshit about pathe lses traveled and path well trodeni n the end yo uare doing whatevr yone else has done. The path whic suits you best.

So basically nob off wit yur 'i am doing the htings most peopel don't' crap, as we al do what we are urged to do bilogially or just mentally, no-one is different

BOOM

[AugustWest]

GABBY JOHNSON IS RIGHT!

[greenkoolayd]

thre path of artleast eeasistance.

the path of least assistance 

[Drygioni]

GABBY JOHNSON IS RIGHT!

Hahahaha.

the path of least assistance 

It's the way backwards

[side_show]

This is an idea I've come across before and don't totally understand. How can you plan when you want to get married before you meet the person you want to marry? Trying to timetable True Love like something that can only lead to bad and sad places.

If your in a relationship where you don't plan to marry that person, then there's the answer.  "I don't plan to marry you or have children, possibly ever.  Though I'm human and things change."  Which is basically what I said to my husband when he started talking about marrage 6 months into our relation ship.  And I was human, and things did change.  I gave him the respect of being honest with him at the time, and honest with him when things do change.

I guess the obvious disparity is that for ladies, our baby making abilities are on a definite time table.  If having a kid with your DNA is on your life's to do list, like it or not, there a time table involved.  If a partner's goals are to one day ideally marry and have children, as in Dan's case, saying "I'm not looking to get married for X number of years, or have children until I'm X years old or have completed X goal" doesn't mean committing to doing such a thing with the current partner.  This serves to lay the cards on the table, which is part of respectful, honest communication.  It sets the potential shelf-life of the relationship for the other person, telling him or her they need to either be on board with the same plan or understand his or her partner's path is likely to diverge from his or her own at a certain point.  This doesn't mean things are fixed or anything, but it's about communicating trajectories.  If either partner isn't honest or open about such things, you could end up really unhappily in love with someone who wants something you have no desire for.  I've had two close friends end loving partnerships for such reasons recently, and it's god awful to love someone dearly and want very different things out of life.

In Dan's example, he wants to have a wife and kids one day, so the important question becomes, how long would he be willing to wait for his current lady to come around to such a plan, or if she never wants to marry, would he be okay with that over the long term, short term, etc? 

A lot of people are really frightened about talking openly and honestly about the "big things."  I don't know why, but I do think it's why so many people end up divorced these days.  I really do think telling the truth is one of the most important things to share with a partner, in all manners.  It's hella hard work, and scary, but so damn worth it.