Dear Care and Feeding: I Left the Love of My Life Because I Don't Want Kids

Dear Care and Feeding: I Left the Love of My Life Because I Don’t Want Kids
Slate
1/24/2021
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Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding?
Dear Care and Feeding,
I’m one of those letter writers who probably just needs to hear someone say what I already know. A few months ago I ended a five-year relationship with someone I still love dearly because I couldn’t see a way to agree on a future family. When we talked about kids earlier in the relationship, my perception was that both of us were pretty ambivalent. (In my experience, “maybe someday” is what twentysomething men say when they haven’t given it a lot of thought.) Now it seems clear that becoming a dad someday is important to him. Meanwhile, my ambivalence has drifted toward being childfree. If baby fever hasn’t hit me yet, it’s just not going to, right? Everyone told me I’d change my mind when I was older, but now I’m 32 and I still don’t see the appeal of having kids. The stress of wondering whether we had a future together was really affecting me, so I called it off. At the same time, he’s my best friend and I love him with all my heart. It’s hard to imagine ever having that with someone else. Did I do the right thing? Is there any middle path for us that I didn’t see? And how were we able to misunderstand each other for so long?

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