11 December 2023 , 15:55
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A man has divided public opinion after admitting his u-turn on having children was only realised once his wife became menopausal. With the man turning 57 the same year his wife turned 55, he told how the pair were together for 25 years before he called time on the relationship due to his desire to start a family.
He said: “When my ex and I got together she was a self-described open-minded person who, unlike other women I dated, did not start pulling my arm on the marriage issue after we passed the one-year mark. She had a mum who grew up in Sweden where couples would live together, have children, but never marry.”
He told how, although she was initially on the fence about having children, he didn’t want them at the time due to the sacrifices he had to make to start a business: “I’d resent my kids for getting in the way of that,” he admitted.
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His stance, which caused the couple to argue and go to couples counselling over the years, led to them deciding to enjoy the money from the business once it started coming in instead: “I felt like my girlfriend did not want to rock the boat at that point,” he said.
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After travelling the world and his girlfriend giving up her job to focus on charity work instead, the man told that reaching his late fifties and his partner reaching the menopause at 53 had caused him to reconsider his life options: “It registered that the door to having biological kids was closed forever,” he recalled.
“Since then I’ve been in an internal crisis because everything about my life has gotten old. My life felt empty. I had worked through the emotional issues that prevented me from wanting kids and now I desperately wanted a family.”
After becoming depressed about his situation and recognising his “desire to have biological kids, to see little quirks of myself reflected in my kids in a way that can only be described by biology,” he decided to take action and tell her his truth.
With his girlfriend dismissing his feelings as a ‘midlife crisis’, and telling him he was ‘narcissistic' for not wanting to adopt, the man asked her to move into his his vacation house for a month until she found her own place to live.
“The whole time she’s telling everybody I’m crazy and will wake up. Am I at fault for changing my mind when my girlfriend is acting like I don’t get to change my mind?” His tale left Reddit readers in a rage, with some furious on his girlfriend’s behalf: “If this post is real he is one of the biggest a***holes I’ve ever encountered,” said one, with another simply commenting: “What a scumbag.”
Another said: “Good luck finding a 30s-something woman who would want to have kids with a man nearly 60 years old,” while one sarcastically wished him luck becoming an older father: “He is so going to love having teenage kids at age 70: ‘Shut up, old man!’"