4
THE REASON JOEL and I broke up was that Joel didn’t want kids and I did.
It took a while for us to land on this, for it to be actually said out loud, finalised and put into words, to be an official position and not just vague ‘I’m not sure’ and putting things off and circular discussions—‘Do we really want this?’ ‘How badly do you want it?’ ‘But aren’t we happy how we are?’ ‘Do we know any happy parents?’ ‘Are we just doing it because of societal pressure?’ ‘Why do we want it?’ ‘What about climate change?’ ‘There are enough people in the world, aren’t there?’ ‘How will we afford it?’—and on and on and on.
I agreed with Joel, on a logical level, with all his arguments against having a child. If it was a high-school debate, he would win. If it was a court case, with him standing there arguing at a jury, he also would have won. He had facts and evidence and proof. Children were hard. They cost money. And time. So much time. You shouldn’t do it unless you’re one hundred per cent sure. Every child born in the western world was going to consume too many resources. Having children was egotistic. It was boring, it was conventional, it was what you were told to do. He liked his sleep. So did I. He liked working all day and night. He liked having weekends, having freedom. So did I. He set out a vision of a life we could live without kids, and it was seductive and beautiful. We would buy a beautiful apartment, get a French bulldog or a Siamese cat, travel, eat out, live wildly and erratically, earn a lot of money and do big, important things. We can still be anyone, we can do anything , he said. The implication being, once you had a kid, you couldn’t just reinvent yourself or be anyone, because your primary identity became mother or father. I didn’t have a rebuttal for any of that.
Sometimes he would waver. He had a nephew who was the cutest thing you could ever imagine as a baby. Once he said, ‘Fuck it, maybe you’re right, we should do it.’ And then I hesitated. I wanted to, but certainly not yet , and I didn’t truly believe he wanted it. I was scared of pregnancy. Even more so of parenthood. I wanted to do it, one day, in the future, but I needed support and encouragement. I wanted to do it with someone who was so into it, who was so confident and unwavering, they would carry me along and smooth down my anxieties and encourage me and tell me it will be worth it every day. I didn’t want to have a baby with someone who might say, ‘I told you so,’ and, ‘I wasn’t the one who wanted this,’ when I complained about how hard it was.
I had never wanted a wedding, or an engagement, or an engagement ring. None of that was worth anything to me, but, I eventually realised, I wanted this . Wanted it because I hungered for feeling that kind of love, the love for a child, that might feel different from everything else. Could Joel really be the right person for me if he didn’t want kids? It was a fundamental mismatch. And yet. And yet…
How to know whether to give up a whole relationship, wreck something I valued above all things, over a feeling, an instinct, a small but urgent desire, a little flickering candlelight of hope when I had a full roaring fire of love already. The want for a baby was a desire that I knew nothing about, an imagined love. What if I broke up with Joel and then found out I couldn’t have kids? What if I had a kid with someone else, someone lesser, a nobody, and then I hated being a mother and hated this guy, and I had given up Joel ? Were you supposed to pick kids or pick your soulmate? I had always assumed you got both, I assumed you got everything you wanted, just because you wanted it.
I didn’t properly articulate to Joel that I did want children for a long time after I came to the realisation myself. Our relationship had started to feel too fragile to bear such a deep divergence in desires. We had drifted, and that feeling was foreign, because all the time we’d been together I’d felt so tightly entwined with him—we’d been each other’s everything. He’d filled my world, and now he was closing, turning away, and I was panicking. Everything I did suddenly seemed to annoy him. He started getting headaches a lot and though he never said it was my fault, the implication was it might be. We were out of sync, which was normal from time to time in long-term relationships, but I didn’t know how to pull us back together. And now I was holding this secret feeling, this secret knowledge that I was no longer on the fence about kids but definite. I owed him the truth but I didn’t know how or when to bring it up, what to do.
I told him, late one night, when I thought he might already be asleep, so it was almost like a trial run. I could do it again tomorrow, do it better.
‘I think I do want kids,’ I whispered.
‘What?’ he had said, rolling over, speaking at a normal volume and sounding wide awake.
‘I want kids. Or a kid. One. Just one. I want to try, anyway. Not now. But one day. In a few years time, maybe.’
‘Oh.’
‘I mean, I’m sure about it. I’m sure that’s what I want.’ Saying the words out loud made me feel even more sure. It was a relief, to have made a decision, and now I’d made it, I felt it intensely. I want children one day. I want the chance to be a mother . I’m committed to wanting this.
‘I want to be sure, I wish I was sure, I wish it more than anything,’ Joel said. ‘But I’m not.’
‘That’s okay.’
‘I don’t want you to resent me.’
‘I won’t.’
‘So you want kids, but you’re happy to stay with someone who doesn’t?’
‘Well, no.’
‘Then what?’
‘I’ll stay with you until you change your mind or until I do,’ I said, laughing a little, so it was clear I wasn’t being serious, that I knew what a bad idea it was. But we both knew I was being serious and it was a recipe for total disaster.
‘Okay,’ he said softly, and we both felt it, the shifting, the ominous clouds settling over our relationship.
He hugged me that night. And it was a few more nights before we broached it again. This time, Joel spoke.
‘I think maybe we shouldn’t stay together,’ he said.
‘You want to break up?’ I said, and I was already crying, just saying the words.
‘I don’t. I don’t want to. But I don’t know if I can ever give you kids. And I don’t feel like you’ve been happy, lately, with me, anyway.’
‘It’s not that I’ve been unhappy. I just—’
‘We’re going to be thirty soon.’
‘That’s still young.’
‘I don’t want you to turn forty and realise you made a mistake.’
‘Being with you is never going to be a mistake.’
‘It might be though.’
We talked on and on, and round and round. One night, I’d gone to bed thinking we were still trying to find a way to stay together and he’d assumed we were breaking up, because we’d discussed it for so long, we’d lost count of who said what and what we’d agreed on. It didn’t feel like there were enough reasons to let go. We loved each other, we kept coming back to that. We had built this life, together, this great life. If Hayley and Luke were happy, we should be too.
It didn’t matter in the end because now that the idea was out there, the breakup had become inevitable. It barrelled towards us and then it happened. And through it all, I held on tightly to the idea that I was doing what was right, for me, for my heart, for my future, because I wanted kids and Joel didn’t.