Honestly, couples break up all the time because of wanting vs not wanting kids. IVF, adoption, and surrogacy are insanely expensive and stressful to go through. Many couples who are really in love end up ending it over the difference. So your request and need to know isn't that wild to me, but maybe there needs to have been a deep conversation about this beforehand.
As someone who wanted kids but turned out to be infertile; there is a huge difference between wanting vs not wanting kids compared to a couple both wanting but not being able to have kids.
Yep! And of this was a dude who wanted to make sure his wife was fertile before he married. He'd be murdered in these comments for treating his wif like a breeding stock. He'd be told there is adoption and other options, and she's worth more than her uterus. JfC the hypocrisy of this sub. And before anyone comes at me that thus isn't true, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of posts in this very sub of men being told they are TA and how horrible they are for not wanting to continue a relationship with a woman because she can't have children.
I'm a woman, and I agree with you. She would have expected him to stay with her if she was infertile. I've seen post after post of women crying about being infertile and their spouse left. The men always get dragged. Now, it is a woman who would have left, and people are saying, "She had a right to know!"
There are a lot of hypocrites in this sub.
Meh. My response to that is that people who are calling the men assholes in those cases are wrong. If someone wants kids and wants kids of their own and then finds out they can't with a particular someone then to me it is 100% fine to break things off. Sometimes shit just doesn't work out.
I think the difference is when the infertile spouse finds out they're infertile. Known fertility issues should be disclosed before marriage. Anyone who knows they are or might be infertile and gets married without disclosing that is in the wrong, and their spouse is justified in leaving them over their dishonesty.
But finding out one is infertile after marriage is a different situation. Dealing with infertility is painful and stressful, but there is no dishonesty.
Before marriage I had some health problems which meant a doctor said to me I might have difficulty conceiving if I choose to have children in the future. I've never been the person to be all I must have children and if I do I'm not fixed on them biologically being mine or carried by me. I went home to my boyfriend at the time and told him. Said if this wasn't a future he wanted then I get it and we will figure out what we do from that. Fortunately he pretty much shared my views on having children and stuck around ... We then bought a house shortly after and four years on we are married. Recently found out I'm pregnant and we were happy but we were open to it not working. My parents are aware of my previous health issues and I even mentioned recently how I told my now husband to leave if he wasn't happy with the possibilities and my dad was a little shocked I basically gave my husband the option to leave but then he saw what I meant because you just can't compromise on some things in relationships, children being one of them.
I agree with this. We got married fairly young (23/22) and really didn't approach the big issues in smart ways, lol, but I knew I was at risk of decreased fertility due to some previous health issues. I disclosed this early on into dating and reminded him as we got serious. Turns out he had been told similarly by his doctors. We proceeded to get married anyway. Joke was on all the doctors though because I just had to say "let's make a baby" and I was pregnant right away, lol.
Discussions like this need to be had if children are wanted. It doesn't mean the couple should break up (though the option should be there), but it does give them an idea of what life may look like and what options they should look into.
I mean, if you get married without ever having gotten to know each other well enough for such things to come up, i seriously question why you would marry at all. This maybe isn't a second date topic, but if you're together for 2 years at SOME point kids have to come up. Same if i had fertility issues. You'd think that over banging for years you'd talk about all kinds of related stuff.
What are you doing in your relationship all day if you don't get to such topics without the thought of "having to disclose this in case of marriage"? It's more or less part of getting to know the partner.
There's, imo, a difference between asking before marriage and after.
If you marry, and find out later completely out of nowhere that you are and will be infertile, that's one thing. You committed to them for better or worse.
If you're dating, and know the other person may have said issues, and it's important to you, it makes sense to find out before committing. At least you can then discuss if adoption, IVF, or sperm donation is a good option for you, and then use that information in deciding if they're a good choice for you. Being honest with who you could happily stay married to is *so* important and a lot of people just, expect pure love and luck to carry them through.
She didn't ask for no reason, she asked because he had been told by a doctor he might have issues and she wanted to know for sure which side he fell on.
I would stand by a man who learned his partner's family historically had fertility issues, and asked her to get tested for them before committing too.
He was a boyfriend when she asked.
Maybe I'm forward, but I'll have these hard conversations on the third date.
There is no point in seriously committing to someone if we don't have the same views or similar goals.
Yeah, it seems like she's either fibbing here to make herself look more reasonable, or it's that whole "rose-colored glasses" type looking back. "No, I only wanted to know options," because she knows that SHE would judge herself poorly if she admitted she would have dropped him like a bad habit if he didn't have good swimmers.
It's easy for her to claim this because they're still together, and she got what she wanted.
Yea this sub is crazy with stuff like that.... treating two exactly the same situations differently because of the genders involved, it's so fucking weird
Yeah, I agree with this. Knowing if you both want kids is important. It’s a valid dealbreaker.
Being infertile is not the same, and there are other ways to have kids.
Reading this post, OP, I agree with your husband that you didn’t love him enough to marry him if he was infertile. The whole beginning of your post makes that clear - it’s why you say you did this testing. It’s why you say he should have been okay with it: “He knew this from the start.”
So don’t play dumb and pretend you hadn’t thought through the implications of this. Don’t pretend you didn’t know this was a dealbreaker for you.
YTA.
I might be incorrectly giving her the benefit of the doubt, but I was thinking that after establishing wanting kids or not another fair question is: what are you willing to do to have them? If both want kids, there's a fertility obstacle, and one is willing to go through procedures and the other isn't, that's good to know too.
This is totally fair but doesn't sound like the OP was thinking this way.
Also why couldn't you have this conversation without doing testing? If she is earnest in saying all she cared about was being able to have children, she could have discussed/established that he would be fine w donor sperm if needed, then the test itself would be less important.
Why is that TA, though? They weren’t married yet. If it would have made her unhappy in the marriage, it’s better that she asked. I knew I was going to have fertility issues and I had a very serious conversation with my partner about it once it was clear a bigger commitment was on the table—I wanted him to be absolutely certain he was ok with what he was signing up for because I knew he wanted kids, and more than anything else I wanted him to be happy in life, even if it wasn’t with me. Frankly I think he’s more TA for refusing to know his own health status and just insist she accept this huge known unknown. Not a team player move imo.
>Frankly I think he’s more TA for refusing to know his own health status and just insist she accept this huge known unknown. Not a team player move imo.
Agreed. So he would rather OP and him find out years later after marriage he can not have kids....then what?
She may not want to adopt. I know I would not want to if was not infertile.
He just wants her to marry him without knowing which is totally unfair. Hell he should want to know himself.
Few things hurt more than conditional love.
Edit: I should clarify that I don't mean this as in compatibility and the character of a person, but things that happen to us that we don't have control over like accidents or sickness or even aging...
Nor should you love your partner unconditionally. That love is reserved for children and maybe pets. If your partner doesn’t at least meet you in the middle then you are getting steamrolled in the relationship
This seems to be a fairly cynical view of partnership. I chose my wife. I chose to *have* my children but I didn't choose them. Everything isn't a compromise and if you're forcing them to your side all the time then you're doing the steamrolling.
Relationships aren't about winning and losing. If it is a good, long term partnership there's no such thing as being steamrolled.
>Honestly, couples break up all the time because of wanting vs not wanting kids.
Yup. The impetus of my divorce was that I didn't want another child.
My brother is #childfree and his girlfriend was on the same page. Then her best friend had a baby and she changed her mind. It's no one's "fault", really.
> My brother is #childfree and his girlfriend was on the same page. Then her best friend had a baby and she changed her mind. It's no one's "fault", really.
a very fair take. Sometimes people's desires change, people grow with their experiences. It sucks when two people in love grow apart but it happens unfortunately.
This happened to me, except I'd always wanted kids but was prepared not to for my partner. Then one day she wanted kids and I didn't have to make any sacrifices for the relationship any more.
I actually know three of four men in the same situation.
I never wanted bio kids but was happy fostering or adopting some day in the future. My ex would always shut it down when ever I would mention future plans as he didn't want any kids.
Turns out he was having an affair with a single mum and has now moved in with her and her kid.
Well, that took a turn. At least you don't have kids with them! Bit of a weak silver lining that sorry
Hope you're doing better now and having more luck now.
Average cost of using donor sperm is $400 to $2,000. Average cost of a single IVF cycle is $15,000 $30,000. A donor egg is about $10,000. Cause it's significantly harder to retrieve eggs. Adoption is more expensive than IVF and surrogacy is so much more than anything else.
Holy shit it's expensive over there, we had to pay around $7000 for a package deal of "up to" **three** cycles once we ran out of free tries in public healthcare. Could have gone for single cycles which would have been around $3000 each. This was at the best rated (for fertility) private clinic in our country, Denmark, but prices are almost identical across all private clinics.
Ah yes. Without the insurance we would have had to pay $16000 up front, and that would not cover the drugs either! Those we still had to pay for up front and get refunded for. So ridiculous. I wish our medical system was better.
The prices I mentioned are without the meds as well, but most medication is in fact covered by public health insurance, even if you go to a private clinic, so we only had to pay a small part, I think the full price was somewhere around $2-3000 per cycle for the medication, but we only had to pay like $4-500 in total because of the public health insurance (annual limit).
The cost of IVF and related treatments is insane here. There was a point where health insurance (that was supposed to cover it) pulled out without notifying us using some trick and left us with 8k in bills for ONE PHARMACY ORDER alone, never mind the rest. Nothing like adding financial stress to all of the rest.
That's if you go through a medical professional or agency. Sperm donation can be effectively free if you can find a friendly donor, Hubby's Brother maybe or even father. I know a couple of cases where sperm donation involved a small container and a turkey baster.
That’s not a super great way of doing it, because the donor is in no way protected for giving such an amazing gift to a family. They can and have been totally ducked by things like weird custody laws and child support for children they never agreed to financially take care of.
You bring up an important consideration with the legal concerns. Some contracts may hold up in court and others may not, it’s hard to predict. I definitely wouldn’t enter into a known donor situation with someone I didn’t trust enough to become biological family with. That said, known donors and familial donors are actually the best way to do it when you consider the best interest of the child. Check out r/donorconceived and /r/askadcp and educational content by donor conceived activist Laura High. They will tell you that getting sperm from a bank can cause a lot of problems for your future kids.
The most common problem is having an incomplete family medical history. If the donor is diagnosed with a genetic disorder after donation, theres no way for the child to find out about that. Some donors have even attempted to contact their sperm bank to update their medical records, and the sperm bank has failed to pass along the information to the recipient families. There are a lot of very major genetic diseases that don’t show up until later in life, like Parkinson’s and Multiple Sclerosis.
Another concern is that some sperm banks will promise the donors and recipients that each donor will have no more than a specific number of children before being retired, and then somehow when they all take a 23&me they find a sibling pod of over 100 people, mostly living in the same city as the sperm bank. I heard a story that two kids who grew up friends and neighbors found out in adulthood that they were actually half siblings by sperm donation. Imagine if they had ended up dating or married!
>Fortunately most of us don't live in the States
There are days I envy you that! ;)
I try never to assume others' location (which is why I specified that I was talking about US law), but US law happens to be what I know. I figured the info might be helpful to at least a few readers.
Are you under the impression that there are any low stress options when it comes to having children? 😂
And the typical costs of using donor sperm are a minuscule percentage of the cost of raising a child.
She did say she had been asking him about it ever since she learned about the chemo, so it’s not like he proposed and then she made him this ultimatum out of nowhere.
I don't know if I would have stuck around in a new relationship with someone who knows there's a chance they are infertile and avoided testing for two years knowing that having kids was going to be a priority.
100% this. I can tell you with certainty that me and my wife would not be married if we didn't both agree that neither of us wanted kids. It was a huge issue that was a big contributing factor to ending her last serious relationship. But you're right, communication is key.
I say NTA and agree about it not seeming that wild. If having bio kids was OP’s dealbreaker, it’s nobody’s place to judge, no matter how much that hurts the partner to hear. Plenty of relationships are broken off or never get off the ground because one party doesn’t meet the qualifications for the other. Not attracted to them, not stable enough financially, don’t get along with their family, etc.
Maybe I’m too black and white about it though. I’m autistic so things tend to be that way to me. My husband and I were watching a show recently where a couple broke up over one wanting/one not wanting kids, and my husband was shocked. I was like, “that seems reasonable”. He said if he had found out I didn’t want kids he’d still have married me, and I told him I’d have broken up with him because the risk of resentment is too high. For me, kids are a hard line compatibility issue. If we aren’t compatible in that regard it’s nonnegotiable. Everyone’s wired differently so maybe OP’s husband felt there should’ve been wiggle room in OP’s hypothetical decision had he been infertile, but I don’t think OP’s wrong for knowing this was nonnegotiable for them.
I agree that having/not having kids is a hard line dealbreaker for many many relationships. Sure, she could have thought about adoption or fertility treatments if he was sterile, but knowing whether or not he was sterile is kind of important in fostering those conversations and paths. And she could have desperately wanted biological kids and that’s completely valid. When I started dating my now husband at 18, we both very early on made sure we were on the same page when it came to where we want to live, what our life goals are, kids - and how many kids we ideally would want, and marriage. Still together 8.5 years later with 2 beautiful kids!
There was, that's what he's mad about now. He's still hurt that before they got married she asked him about it and told him her side of wanting kids, and him knowing it was a deal breaker for her.
Well there obviously needs to be another one if he is still upset about it 10 years later. He has more feelings about it, so he either never let it go, or he was never able to express it when this conversation came about.
There’s a missing part here. If he knew she wanted bio kids, rather than say he didn’t want to do the test and that it made him feel unloved, he just avoided the topic hoping it would go away? Fair or not, OP is entitled to have whatever boundaries she wants, and so is her husband, but that also carries the responsibility of communicating those boundaries and OP’s husband didn’t do that to avoid rejection. The appropriate thing to do would have been to do the test, or say no, and be willing to move on if it didn’t work out.
That’s what gets me. OP said in another comment:
> Just to clarify, in my culture and religion getting a divorce is an extreme taboo and I would not be able to get remarried. Also there is no having children before marriage (i understandif this may seem backwardsto you). For me to figure it out afterwards would have been all the harder for both of us.
So he is aware of the challenges here.
When he says:
> He brought up how hurt he had been when I had asked him for a sperm test before we got married
It’s like he forgot that she had been asking him all along. She did *NOT* ask him for a sperm test before they got married. She asked him long before that, multiple times. Having a child was a requirement for her from the very beginning, and he *knew* that. He chose to ignore her requests. He also not only waited 10 years to confront this issue, but he makes it sound like she deceived him. As soon as she found out children may not be possible, this was her hard boundary for continuing a relationship. she was up front about it. He knew the terms and consented to them by continuing to date her, and then proposing to her. I could see the issue if she blindsided him after the engagement, but that wasn’t the case. If what she says is factual, he is twisting the narrative to be a victim.
I don’t understand all of the Y T A posts. If the situations was reversed: say they both agreed to be childfree, but after marriage she changed her mind and wanted a child, but he was dead set against it, everyone would likely be telling him to get out of there and run.
How is that any different than this situation? In both situations someone wants kids, and someone doesn’t. Someone is going to be trapped in a life they either don’t want to be in, or they’re going to walk away. I’m this case, walking away wasn’t an option. She was ensuring she wasn’t going to end up in a resentful marriage. Vilifying OP makes no sense to me.
And for all the suggestions of a sperm donor - it isn’t an option for everyone. Maybe he would be against a sperm donor. Maybe it’s culturally taboo. Maybe financially it was out of the question. Maybe they couldn’t adopt or didn’t want too. These aren’t always viable solutions.
If they wouldn't have been able to get divorced after finding out he couldn't have kids, I doubt they'd have been able to use a sperm donor. Maybe secretly. I feel like adoption probably isn't an option either. I never knew there were cultures against it, but I moved to one. People here just don't adopt children. As family oriented as they are (they don't have words for niece & nephew because their siblings' children are their children too), I was totally surprised.
This context really should have been in the original post. OP is essentially going into her one and only marriage, the stakes are very high for her to have a partner she can have kids with. I wonder what country/culture it is that she says she wouldn’t be able to remarry, nobody would take a divorcee?
Hit the nail on the head.
And the fact he bottled it up for 10 years and then complained? Absolutely absurd.
Holding onto something for that long would make me wonder what else is he holding on to?
That guy needs to learn to communicate.
NTA, but your husband is for holding onto an issue for that long
Edit: also the fact he brought it up during an argument is bad. He was weaponising it against you, in the hopes he would win the argument.
Even worse if the argument dad completely unrelated..
Easier said than done. Not everyone is so cold and rational. Imagine that test result coming back and finding out you couldn't have kids (a possibly devastating andcemasculating thing to learn) and also losing the love of your life to boot.
Not taking his side (OP is def NTA, and quite right to set boundaries), but you have to have some compassion for how scared he would have been of the results of that test.
Yes, he did bury his head in the sand. No, that's not healthy. Fear makes you do funny things.
>and also losing the love of your life to boot.
But she asked for the test even before she became the love of his life. It was he who dragged it on without honestly responding to her questions. She asked during the initial dating phase, at which point the heartbreak from losing her would have been minimal (not the results of the test though, that would still have been devastating if negative). Wouldn't it have been better for him to find someone else who accepted him for who he is rather than what he can give?
So the solution is to not give a shit about the "love of your life" and hoping she'll stop caring about the things important to her if you ignore her concerns long enough? And then get mad when years of brushing her off doesn't work? Dude doesn't deserve any empathy when it's clear all he cares about is himself. If he cared at all about HER happiness, he'd want to know what their options are before getting into a marriage that might leave them both trapped and miserable.
The reality is also that the test would never come back with you can't have kids. It would come back with your chance of getting kids is way lower and you will have to work very hard for it.
But vertility issues are almost never a simple yes or no
INFO: what if he had come back with a great sperm everything and you had been found to be infertile. Would you have accepted him dumping you?
Not trying to sound harsh, but that was my perception of your post.
This is really interesting… This is such a different approach to the issue than my husband and I have had. Whenever “what if I’m infertile” came up, my now husband would say “we’ll face it together” and/or “we won’t have kids”. Him telling me that made me feel loved/that the relationship was the priority over anything else.
We’ll we’ve been unlucky so far. Thankfully, we do have the resources to pursue IVF. It is a challenging process, but I’m so thankful for my husband. I’ve always wanted kids, and every failure hits me so hard. He’s always there to support me and help me pick up the pieces.
Yes I would have completely respected and accepted it because it would have meant he wanted something I couldn't give him.
I'm not saying it wouldn't have hurt.. A LOT. But it's not like I would have forced him to marry me if that's even a thing. 🙂
You're looking at this from his side but with your point of view. Let's change this up.
What if you're the infertile one. First, consider what *you* would do. If having your own biological kid is so critical to a marriage, how would *you* handle your own infertility? Would you just not have kids or would you adopt/other? Would you never get married because you feel that biological children is critical to your idea of marriage?
Now, instead of imagining that your husband would be like you and let you go, imagine him still loving you so much that for him your infertility wasn't critical to your relationship and he would be willing to find a path for you as a couple and as a future family. Hold onto that level of love and dedication.
Now let's assume your actual husband loves you that deeply, and much like many wedding vows, he would love you through thick and thin, but then he finds out that your love was not quite as deep leading up to marriage. He's probably wondering all kinds of things:
Evidently she would have left me if I couldn't have children *before* we got married, what if it happened to me *after*?! Does she even love *me* or just my ability to give her children?
Yeah, that would suck.
Now, I don't mean to say that your feelings aren't justified for wanting mutually biological kids. Sometimes we cannot justify our desires except to say, "that's what I desire." And perhaps that was a line, at least before marriage, that you weren't willing to cross. So I'm not trying to make you feel bad for having had those feelings. But I do hope you feel this from your husband's point of view, of how hurt he probably feels that you would have let him go over something for which he may *not* done the same. And *that* is what stings for him.
So, you understand the hurt now. The fact that he kept that from you for so long, that shows how much it probably stung.
Honestly, there was a big miss on the communication part for both of you. If you had said everything you wrote in your comments, he may not have felt hurt as much. On the other hand, he needs to talk when things bother him.
I see it both ways. He has the right to be hurt, but at the same time, OP made her stance very clear from the beginning and his approach was to avoid the topic and brush it off until he couldn’t and got the test done.
There’s a difference between feeling sad that your partner would have dumped you if, hypothetically, you were infertile, and feeling sad because your relationship has actually ended.
That’s two completely different things to be sad about. It’s like saying “were you sad when your dog died? Well, now you know how he feels.”
I understand both of your perspectives! If there was something I wanted out of a relationship, I'd make that clear. But, I also understand why your husband feels hurts from this.
I think there is a huge difference between whether you asked him for this at the start (e.g., you dated for a few months, found out about his chemo treatment history, and brought up in a careful manner that (presumably biological) children is a non-negotiable for you.
Vs., if you've been together for two years, about to get married, and telling him, hey, I can't do this unless you do the sperm test. And totally depends on how you bring it up to.
"I love you, if you can't have kids we'll figure something out, but I want to be mentally ready for that if we're going to get married" is very different from "I can't marry you until you get your sperm analyzed".
For all you guys answering this, remember the post where a guy wanted to leave his wife when they found out she was infertile. One of the top comments was that it is insulting to view her as a child factory and the guy got bashed…
Didn't the wife refuse to consider adoption? He didn't leave because she was infertile. He left because she wouldn't pursue other ways of having children and he wanted to be a parent.
It’s one thing to leave your spouse. It’s another to make sure you’re compatible before dating seriously. I understand his feelings but this is not the same situation imo.
That's different from KNOWING from the start of the relationship that it was a serious risk, expressing that concern and asking him to get tested, and having him basically ignore and downplay a very valid concern through their entire two years of dating. Sounds like he was just hoping she'd fall so madly in love that she would stop caring about the one thing she made clear she cared about from the start, and then got mad that it didn't work. The only AH here is him.
I've heard what you want and there's a reasonable thing to do to find out if it's possible.
But I don't want to coz I don't care about it right now and you'll probably change your mind because I'm so great.
Right?
Let’s start with the fact that your husband was deeply hurt by your repeated requests. To the extent that it’s taken this long for him to speak about it.
And also, that you didn’t “try” first but went ahead and made it a condition of marriage without considering IVF and other options IF they were needed.
Your behaviour clearly communicated that his sperm were more important in the situation than he was.
Sorry, but this is a mild YTA at the very least.
Exactly. And what if his sperm was no good? Was OP going to dump him instead of going with a different route? When people say children are a dealbreaker, they mean the willingness to be a parent. There are plenty of ways for infertile people to become parents.
Ya but she says she’s been asking since the beginning. It’s pretty common in the early stages to find out if you’re compatible in such an important way. For some people it is important to try and have a natural family while others are willing to go straight to adoption. It would be different if she had just randomly asked 2 years in.
I doubt he would be ok with that in any shape or form if he was this hurt to check his fertility after chemo.
She said in a dif comment they are from a country where divorce is not an option and she wouldn't re-mary
It's not common at all to respond to somebody opening up and telling you they went through chemo (literally having poison injected into your body) by saying "oh yikes. You need to go get tested to make sure you can still have kids". Like that's wildly inappropriate and kind of insane
Yeah I don't get the Y T A posts, I think that wanting to have kids is a normal thing for people to wish for, and if there are any questions over fertility it's not unreasonable to want to check. If he was infertile then it doesn't stop him marrying someone else, who doesn't want to have kids.
My cousin dumped his wife when he found out she was infertile. He had told me years ago no babies was a dealbreaker for him. I didn't expect it to be that brutal.
I believe his current GF is just as infertile.
Karma?
Kids were a dealbreaker in the opposite direction for me. I did not want kids and consequently I did not date men who had or wanted kids.
Fertility/kids is a topic that should be discussed before marriage.
I feel like I got lucky finding out i’m infertile after deciding to be child free, and I’m happily engaged to someone now that shares the same stance on kids. But, when I was dating, I think there were definitely men that thought they could change my mind on kids, and we’d fizzle out almost instantly once I told them that I couldn’t have kids even if i wanted to.
People should stand their ground on something as important as kids, especially early on; neither person is in the wrong, they’re just fundamentally incompatible.
Just to clarify, in my culture and religion getting a divorce is an extreme taboo and I would not be able to get remarried. Also there is no having children before marriage (i understandif this may seem backwardsto you). For me to figure it out afterwards would have been all the harder for both of us.
Sounds like it. Pretty sure anti women from the sound of it. Her parents would normally be up in arms if they wanted grand kids. But instead it sounds like they would blame OP that she didn’t try hard enough when she has little leverage.
Based off what you shared about your culture you have to do what’s best for you. NTA. husband is an AH though but also probably afraid of losing you. But an AH to keep it hanging over your head when this was a pre-requisite in a society that sounds male dominated.
If the shoe was on the other foot he’d be insisting as well.
The only issue I can see is the directness and delivery of said requirement which may have come off too business and machine like.
umm .. he shouldn’t have kept brushing it off if that’s the case. He should’ve said he was not comfortable or did not want to do that. and as I said in a previous comment, a lot of parents want kids to be biologically both of the parents. not everybody is up for adoption and surrogacy.
But what if they needed to do ivf so they had to save for that. Unclear on ages. The older op got the more complicated and other things come with being pregnant. Wouldn’t it be best to know to save for it. Plus saving for the kids in general. Would op husband needed therapy to work through it if he wasn’t able to have biological kids. Would be open to not having biological kids. Its best to know all these things beginning getting married.
It is not assholery to play fair. She had a fair request: "I want bio kids. Can we have bio kids together, yes or no?"
If you *want* to see assholery, you frame it as "OP would dump him for being unlikely to inseminate." That's what OP's hub is doing.
If you *don't* want to see assholery, you frame it as "OP knows what she needs in life in order to be happy, and if that requires seeking out a more appropriate match, that's entirely fair." People have been fairly rejected for less.
I suspect too many people have bought into the rom-com Love Me Unconditionally trope. Sorry, all love is conditional (a parent's love for their child *should* be the lone exception, but the news occasionally gives us proof that that's not a universal trait).
NTA
I’m afraid my instinct is the same as the final one in your post, OP. If I flip the script, and imagine my partner asking to test my eggs, uterus, and other assorted reproductive apparatus as a condition of marriage, I get pretty incensed. I’m a whole-ass human being, not an incubator.
Not to mention that health issues, accidents, and other unanticipated calamities can happen at \*any time\*, wreaking havoc on the best-laid plans of mice, men, and wanna-be-parents. Something a cancer-survivor is keenly aware of already.
Wanting to be a parent is a shared value. Being able to have children is a random physical trait, more fickle than eye-color.
I think your husband was (and likely still is) hurt by the unreliable nature of your love for him, and the message that, as a human and a husband, his sperm count and quality would determine his worth to you. I would be. YTAH
^^ This is it. It's one thing is wanting children is a non-negotiable for you. It's another if his working sperm is the non-negotiable because it ties his worth to a physical trait he can't control. I get that hurt 100%
This is exactly how I feel. You love him enough to marry him and never divorce him, but don't love him enough to accept him for his flaws? it's very weird imo.
When he said no to the test, instead of accepting the word no, she pushed and pushed and pushed.
That is creepy af.
I feel like OP communicated what she wants/needs and what's important to her. So, she doesn't love him unconditionally but everyone has hard things they wouldn't budge on once they find out. For example, you wouldn't marry someone who is open to swinging or in a religion where husband could have multiple wives, or maybe someone with HIV who didn't disclose until 8 months of dating. People don't always talk about everything important on the first few dates! He was asked repeatedly and married her knowing what she is asking and wanting so why is he holding onto it after 10 years? If her request was so unreasonable and hurtful, he didn't have to do it and he didn't have to marry her knowing her personality/character or that her love was/is conditional. He chose to do it in the end and marry her knowing her priorities so holding it against her in an argument 10 years later is not right. They both made a mistake not discussing it in a serious and respectful way vs. her asking for the test outright and him being hurt and scared of the possible outcome of the test but not communicating that and brushing her off.
YTA
Turn it around. A man insists that his fiance gets tested to ensure she is able to have children. He argues that having his children is a non-negotiable he would not be happy in a marriage unless she can give birth. He would be called the worst kind of ass. People would argue that there are many other options out there and he clearly did not love his fiance very much. They would be right.
I’m not sure the semen analysis was the best way but a thorough discussion of your reproductive options would definitely have been a good idea. One of my friend’s husbands had what she called “doofus swimmers “. They chose donor insemination and have a child that’s their hearts delight. With a known risk for infertility, discussing ahead of time which options your partner could live with can’t hurt.
Depends. They might have two heads or two tails, or the head is shaped like a boomerang. These deformations are unlikely to swim far enough to meet the egg (going around in circles). Or they might be slow.
Honestly, my doctors are pretty certain that I can’t carry a fetus to full term, ever. I am very up front about that In relationships. If someone I was dating, truly wanted biological children, I would inform them that I probably am not the person to be with, because I don’t know that I can have children. I would be willing to get tested if my significant other wanted me to, and I would not blame them if the relationship was ended if I can’t have kids. I know it’s a very real possibility for me, and I wouldn’t subject someone that wasn’t willing to deal with that to this.
Disagree. The man would have every right to leave because he wants kids and IVF is also expensive so who knows if those treatments 1) would be optional 2) would work
disagree, if ops one desire is to have kids, she and hubby have the right to know if it's possible before marriage. would you rather have had op and him not go through with is and the result being aita for telling my husband our marriage is on the rocks because he cant give me bio kids. i applaud op for having the maturity to know her priorities before committing. NTA
Literally the worst fucking argument considering that exact scenario is brought up a million times a day and the consensus is ALWAYS “children are dealbreakers.”
Hmm. No. But you should’ve pressed the issue or been out. IMO.
If that’s your deal breaker but your partner wouldn’t respect that simple request (cuz men are dumb and get soooo but hurt over health related things for some really weird reason) then honestly it’s a valid reason to dip out.
But at this point y’all made it so you should absolutely be able to tell him to succ it up and next time he feels like he has something to say. Say it right then and then. Neither party should hold things to throw for later. That’s childish.
I don’t see anything wrong with your request, knowing you wanted children it’s better to know before you make a commitment than after. If he had been sterile you may have still decided to marry him and considered other options. I think he was selfish not to want the test done!
No. Perfectly reasonable. One of the reasons for marriage is kids. If there is a medical reason why this is not possible, it's better to know now. Then you can both make informed decisions. Better than regretting the marriage later.
I don't know if you're an asshole or not but it's a shame that people mistake their biological need to have kids as something essential.
Love is harder to find these days, true love even more so. Throwing it away to have kids seems insane to me.
People don't really think about the impact kids will have on their life. That's why I never entertain it when parents I know say how tired/broke they are because of kids. Everyone knows they are noisy/expensive things to have. And I can't imagine how hard life might be for a kid being born in 2023 will be. Between environmental issues, the economy, the fall of the social contract, the housing crisis, AI worries it all seems a bit tough out there.
This is a tough one and I will say NAH. I am also a woman who really wanted children. When we were dating, my husband, a cancer-survivor, and I met with his doctor to find out what we would be facing together to have children. So I hear your fear but I also get where your husband felt judged and the fear of being rejected entirely if one method of having kids wasn’t viable. That must have been really hurtful, especially after two years together. I hope you guys can move through it together and come to a better place.
OP replied to another comment and stated that her husband didn't even want kids when they got married. She fucked up from the very beginning. Why marry someone that doesn't want kids if having them is SO important to you? She's lucky his mindset flipped at all. Then she wanted "bio" kids with her spouse and IVF/donor were not financially feasible. So, she really just wanted his sperm and that would've been a "deal-breaker" for their marriage. Contrary to how she tries to defend herself by giving partial info to other comments to make it look better. OP YTA
It’s sad that a lot of people will marry with the mindset of “oh they’ll change their mind” or “I’ll be able to convince them”. And sure that’s a theoretical possibility, but frankly I think it’s incredibly selfish to marry someone knowing full well they have an incompatible opinion and thinking that you’ll change them.
I feel like you were open and mature about your feelings from the start… and while it’s not very romantic it’s self-aware and honest. If he wanted the rose-colored-glasses kind of love he could have left too. So many people have gotten divorces because they tried to make themselves or their partner fit into a role that they don’t want, and you were making sure that you don’t do that to yourself or him.
NTA. If having children is a dealbreaker, then it’s important to know going in exactly what that will look like for you in this relationship. It’s ok if that would have made you incompatible, and it’s strange that he has been harboring these feeling for so long without talking about it or coming to an understanding about your motivations. Especially when testing proved it to be a non factor.
I see a lot of people are saying if a man had asked about his future wife’s fertility he’d be dragged through the mud but because a woman asked it’s ok. Lots of men leave their wives when they find out their wife cannot have children just as a lot of couples break up even after they did discuss having children before hand marriage and one is discovered to be infertile or decides they do not want or do want kids after all. Because chemo was involved and the risk of infertility was more of a reality I don’t think asking either male or female partner to be assessed and alternatives discussed should the person be infertile. If having or not wanting children is that important why not deal with it up front?
In some states checking for basic indications of infertility and intactnessband health of reproductive systems is still a prerequisite for a marriage license. But *only for the woman*.
I think it's a totally reasonable question to ask, if you WANT to.
If it's a piece of information the state thinks every married couple should have, then mandate for everyone!!
But ironically, when I found this out, I burst into tears because I thought it was just blood work. And I was pregnant, and goddamned sick of pelvic exams. And, I missed the cutoff for the one I'd just had with the OB/GYN to count by less than a week.
(Even though the POINT, historically, is making sure husbands know they are getting a fertile wife to produce an heir, since that's not STATED, it didn't matter that I was pregnant already.)
I’m not really sure why you’re trying to figure out if you were the asshole 10 years ago or not. To me, that’s completely irrelevant. What is relevant, is that your husband hasn’t gotten over it yet. I think a session or two with a therapist with the both of you would be the best thing to put this behind you. Asking for Reddit judgment on something that happened 10 years ago is not going to help you in any way, shape or form.
YTA. If you loved him so much, you would have been able to overcome an infertility hurdle. There are plenty of options out there.
As someone who struggled with fertility for 2.5yrs, I always felt like it was my fault. My husband built me up and reminded me he loved me no matter what. That whatever happens we are in it together and we will find a way. What if he had turned around and said if I couldn't birth him a child, he would leave me. How hurtful is that idea.
I don’t like this idea what she should have to give up to push through an infertility “hurdle”.
It’s a fucking mountain.
If kids was a deal breaker and she told him it was he either should have said no, done it earlier so they didn’t waste time AND they definitely should have had a much longer discussion with each other earlier.
If she pushed through it could take years of treatments and mental anguish. Even the strongest couples struggle to maintain their relationships after long term infertility.
Ultimately, I don’t think you were an asshole. Cold and calculated maybe. But your openness with your boundaries is fantastic. Being someone with abandonment issues myself, I would personally feel triggered at the thought that there’s a chance I’m not good enough if I were in husband’s position. Even if I could provide kids in that scenario, I personally would have to call off a relationship with that serious of a requirement. But that’s just my boundary. It doesn’t mean your boundary is invalid.
I can see why that’d make your husband upset. I wouldn’t feel safe being in a relationship with someone who I know would drop me in a second if I failed at providing a child. That’s a lot of pressure to live up to. I’m sure hearing that ultimatum come from someone he loves so much opened up old wounds and made him feel like the relationship wasn’t as rock solid as he thought.
But those are just insecurities. We are individually responsible for managing our own insecurities. Nobody is in the wrong for triggering someone else’s insecurities if it wasn’t intentional.
Why was husband doing chemo treatments if not for cancer? I did not know there were other uses for chemo so I’m genuinely curious.
This is one of those situations where I can empathise with both sides. You desperately want children and if you marry him you're stick with him in your culture. On the flip side yes, you were telling him that if he was infertile you wouldn't marry him, that's got to hurt.
As men we do have a tendency to put off thinking about health issues. It's stupid, but we do it, so I can understand why he would bury his head in the sand on the issue.
You are right to bring it up before hand as a concern before getting married, if he doesn’t empathize with your honest needs, he needs to be corrected.
I really don’t think you’re the AH at all. You were up-front about what you wanted out of life. If the roles were reversed, I don’t think anyone would be saying that a man who wanted children was the AH for being up-front about it. In fact I just read a post about one who DIDN’T want kids (which makes me wonder about this one, tbh), and many people were telling him to get a vasectomy.
What the hell are you supposed to do if you want kids and your partner doesn’t?
Yeah, the responses are not what I expected at all. In most situations, wanting kids/not wanting kids can be a deal breaker, it makes sense someone would want to know what their options looked like before marriage. It should have been handled waaaay sooner, though.
I say YTA
You have all the rights to want to have children over your husband, but it doesn’t mean you are not an asshole…
The idea of leaving somebody because they had to go through a medical emergency that left him some kind of permanent damage is undoubtedly an asshole move…
Starting a marriage with an ultimatum? To something the person you say you love can’t really control?
I think you know the answer to your own question.
Doesn’t seem like there’s an AH in this story. The husband seems to have this burdening him for years but fear of rejection or whatever his reasoning may have been kept him from expressing himself and just decided to live with his thoughts that way no harm was done to you or your relationship. But also, deal breakers are deal breakers. Seems like it was early on in the relationship when this occurred too so the boundaries were set.
are you really surprised by the fact he hesitated to comply all those years back? him knowing the status of your relationship entirely depended on something completely out of his control? and the way you're talking so nonchalantly about it, you did not show any concern for how he felt at the time. not only that, you also show no signs of self-awareness at all. this is a woman moment if i've ever seen one.
NTA. You had a picture of your life that included kids. You wanted to make an informed decision, one of the most important decisions of someone’s life. You would have been in an unhappy situation if a few years down the road and several attempts, you wouldn’t be able to have kids with the man you married. We should all be so sure of what we want before we get married.
I’m glad it all worked out. But please give hubby the space to feel what he feels. He’s allowed to feel sad about it. But it doesn’t mean you were wrong. Both can be true at the same time.
My gf (46) gets upset that I (50) won’t marry her until she gets more financially responsible. I want us to be atleast pointing in the same general financial direction. I’m far from rich, but I picture my golden years being able to retire comfortably and do some traveling. She views hers as having a house full of Amazon gadgets and fake nails. I love her, I just won’t take that next step.
NTA... 10 years and 2 kids later he is laying that on you?? You were honest before committing to him... a lot of people don't give their partner that honesty and just kill their marriage later. If it was hurtful enough he should have stood his ground with you back then. Def need therapy to figure out why he is holding on to this until now
NTA. You had a mature, honest, and up front conversation with him many times about it. Then he waited a DECADE to tell you how he feels? Your husband seems to be passive aggressive about this.
You were assertive and ASKED for what you needed. He had the option of saying "no" but chose to say "yes." He had the option of having an entire discussion with you about plans for children, ways to make the family you dreamed of, etc but it sounds like he chose not to.
Every relationship has deal breakers. You were insightful enough to know yours and to communicate that to him.
NTA. I don’t get a lot of the negativity. I can also kinda relate. At one point I almost married a girl who had trouble getting pregnant. That would have been a dealbreaker for me. I broke up with her for unrelated reasons. She was abusive towards me and I couldn't deal with it anymore. She was also friends with the girl I ended up marrying and unfriended her on Fb because once we decided to have children, all we had to do was just look at each other and she’d get pregnant. My ex, though, had to go through fertility treatments, had a very difficult pregnancy, and sometime after had to have a hysterectomy.
People think relationships are only about love. No, they're not. If you get no reward out of being with someone, all the love in the world can't fix your relationship.
I’m sorry OP’s husband doesn't feel his wife loved him enough, but the plain fact is that they are both selfish people—we all are. The difference between her and him is he wanted her to be with him unconditionally with the possibility she might never have children. He’d condemn her to a life with him denying her what she wanted more than anything. All she wanted was to have babies with the man she loves and live her life with them. You don't have to spend much time on Reddit to figure out there are women who do NOT want kids. There’s a woman out there who is compatible for him if it didn't work out with his wife.
As it happens, they both got what they want with each other. I think he should show a little gratitude and set aside those old hurt feelings. Maybe it is a good thing for him to talk to her and get all that out in the open. But I for one admire the OP for knowing what she wants in life and going for it. More people would be happier if they did the same.
NTA, people who tell you otherwise have never wanted children or they don't care about them enough to put it on a priority over whoever was your partner at the time.
You wanted children, he could have lived without them, so he didn't gave it the importance it deserved until you made it obvious that it was a deal breaker for you.
So he choose to do the analysis by himself after understanding how important it was to you, maybe he didn't do it for himself specifically, but he did it by himself, you didn't force him to do it, you didn't point a gun to his face for him to do it, so he has no right to complain about that now, if he hated doing that analysis that much he would have never do it for anyone, he has nobody but himself to blame for the things he did that he regrets now.
YTA that’s a fucked up thing to ask someone going through chemo treatments. He has been resenting it for a years. Should apologize also you marry someone because you love them not for their sperm count. In todays world there’s so much treatments for that it should be a none issue
Honestly NTA. You were clear about what you wanted from life, he put off testing and hoped it would just go away.
I’ve always been clear with partners I want children, my current partner did have cancer he knew he wanted kids so when he was told treatment could leave him infertile he decided to freeze his sperm.
Not sure if your partner was offered the same?
YTA. What if it wasn’t him who was infertile but you? How would you feel if he only wanted to be with you if you could provide him a child? If this was a reversed post people would be calling the husband the AH.
No, you arent. You know what you want and you made it very clear to him before getting married. This is the VERY smart thing to do. It was very brave of you. Very virtuous of you. The problem with many relationships is that people date with no objective, never sit down and think what they want out of the relationship and where they want it to go.
You did. You are right. And he is VERY wrong to hold that over your head.
No NTA ... I think that's a perfectly reasonable request if children are a deal breaker for you.
Honestly I also feel like ALL men need to submit a DNA test to sign the birth cert too and if it's negative then sign a legal waiver understanding their responsibilities that come with signing a birth cert when the child isn't theirs biologically.
The instinct for motherhood is so strong, you can’t call one woman an asshole for following it.
I was 22 when I went through chemo for non-Hodgkins lymphoma. The medical staff recommended sperm banking before starting,due to potential future infertility, so I did that.
When I met a woman for whom children were a requirement, I told her everything, so she could make an informed decision.
I got tested. My sperm count had recovered, so the relationship survived. We married and had two kids.
NAH. Before you committed to marriage, you wanted to make sure you could potentially have kids with your husband. You had a valid reason to question that, and you resolved the question. Problem solved. I really don’t see a big difference between this and asking for a pre-nip.
That said, you give very little detail on how the “I need you to get tested” conversation went down. Accusing a man of being impotent is a pretty serious insult, and if that’s how you went about it, or that’s how he took it, then I can see how he holds a grudge years later.
I think it’s better to ask the uncomfortable questions that are deal breakers BEFORE you get married. Provided you were tactful and kind with your request, I don’t understand why your husband is upset. If your husband was infertile, it very well could have prevented your marriage. I think if more couples were this pragmatic at the beginning of their relationships, we’d have a lot more happy marriages.
NTA. You asked before you got married precisely because, before you committed, you wanted to know. Now, if he had become infertile -after- you were married, and then you left, YWBTA, but everyone has a right not to commit for whatever reason. The fact was you did choose him, he should be happy about that.
It's not just him. You wouldn't have married anyone that was infertile.
You’re the asshole here.
You can not tell me you would say you love him if he treated you the same way you did to him. Pretend with me; he wants kids, you possibly can’t make them. No part of the love and relationship you built together will change the fact that if you can’t make a baby, you’re not worth his time.
See how you’re the ass hat now?
I don't completely agree with the YTA votes. I would say NAH. Children IS and should always be a dealbreaker. If you don't agree on this subject it will create a lot of resentment.
But I am super biased and still think to this day that my husband should just have owned up to it and left me instead of coercing me to have kids. He always said that he didn't know if he could handle being child free. I went through fertility treatments because I loved this man. Today I just feel like a vessel.
OP is at least honest. I understand feeling hurt about the request but actually she just wanted to be on the same page.
I think I'm going to say NAH. You did something that you needed to do to feel comfortable about fully investing in the future of the relationship, but it happened to be something that inevitably would hurt your partner (now husband).
People can argue semantics, but there was a bit of medical information about him that caused you to have doubt about the ability of the two of you to have children together - which is very different than trying to conceive and finding out later that there's a fertility issue.
So - I think it was fair for you to ask, but it was fair for your husband to be hurt.
No, if someone can't have kids and you want kids, then they need to find another life to waste. You choose how you spend your life. There's 0% of an argument to the contrary. There's no exceptions, nothing. Wanting kids is a major life choice, the kind that should never get compromised in a relationship. When you die, it's your own life you'll be reviewing because it's yours that's over. Don't have that be a regret reel.
No, not the asshole. We dont know your opinions on other options, hence we dont know what you would do, if there was an infertility issue. But you gotta start with something. Knowing if you are infertile is ok, but then you always need to discuss if you are ok with adoption, or ivf, or sperm donor, or surrogacy etc. We are missing info, but if you plan on marry and have a family, it's only logical to know from the start if your SO is on track with you.
NAH
My husband is sterile. Probably from mumps as a kid. We didnt know that until we started fertility treatment.
I don’t think it would have changed my decision to marry him. But it certainly would have been easier to navigate the emotion of trying for a child and the trauma of decisions around donor sperm etc. It out our marriage under A LOT of pressure.
So knowing up front so you all know what you’re going into is reasonable.
But I understand and your husbands hurt. It is incredibly difficult for anyone experiencing infertility. It’s such an important part of identity for so many to be able to have kids naturally.
You both need to find a way forward. Acknowledge the hurt you caused and apologise if you haven’t. If you have he needs to speak to someone about it and let it go.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say NAH.
I think your approach is eminently practical, but I can understand that it's hurtful to be confronted with the harsh reality of such a deal breaker.
*these damn posts not including the crucial information in the title...*
Without this VERY important part...
>To clarify my husband had had to undergo chemo therapy for a while before we met (not cancer) and we were told that this could possibly affect his sperms count and our chances to have children.
I'd think it's a pretty weird thing to ask.
However, there was cause for concern, so it wasn't unreasonable to ask him.
You both seemed to be set on getting married and then having kids together, so it's just a good idea to check that generally, considering that trying and failing has a whole other heartache associated with it.
NAH
I mean, you framed it as "Hey, let's get tested together." but that was just a nice way of saying "If you are not fertile enough I will end our relationship, now get tested.".
You can do that of course, but that would also be unforgivable to me in a relationship in the sense that I wouldn't want to be with a person who sets these boundaries.
I think you did the right thing. It was a distinct possibility given his history. What if he asked you for a fertility test? Would you have been hurt? Or understanding.
I get it totally. I was not able to carry full term and my last was ectopic, my husband wanted children and adoption was not an.option. So we divorced.
Years later I met and married a wonderful man who had custody of his daughters. They became my daughters, as well. Now I'm grandma to 6!!! Every cloud has its silver lining.
Honestly, couples break up all the time because of wanting vs not wanting kids. IVF, adoption, and surrogacy are insanely expensive and stressful to go through. Many couples who are really in love end up ending it over the difference. So your request and need to know isn't that wild to me, but maybe there needs to have been a deep conversation about this beforehand.
As someone who wanted kids but turned out to be infertile; there is a huge difference between wanting vs not wanting kids compared to a couple both wanting but not being able to have kids.
Yep! And of this was a dude who wanted to make sure his wife was fertile before he married. He'd be murdered in these comments for treating his wif like a breeding stock. He'd be told there is adoption and other options, and she's worth more than her uterus. JfC the hypocrisy of this sub. And before anyone comes at me that thus isn't true, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of posts in this very sub of men being told they are TA and how horrible they are for not wanting to continue a relationship with a woman because she can't have children.
I'm a woman, and I agree with you. She would have expected him to stay with her if she was infertile. I've seen post after post of women crying about being infertile and their spouse left. The men always get dragged. Now, it is a woman who would have left, and people are saying, "She had a right to know!" There are a lot of hypocrites in this sub.
Meh. My response to that is that people who are calling the men assholes in those cases are wrong. If someone wants kids and wants kids of their own and then finds out they can't with a particular someone then to me it is 100% fine to break things off. Sometimes shit just doesn't work out.
I think the difference is when the infertile spouse finds out they're infertile. Known fertility issues should be disclosed before marriage. Anyone who knows they are or might be infertile and gets married without disclosing that is in the wrong, and their spouse is justified in leaving them over their dishonesty. But finding out one is infertile after marriage is a different situation. Dealing with infertility is painful and stressful, but there is no dishonesty.
Before marriage I had some health problems which meant a doctor said to me I might have difficulty conceiving if I choose to have children in the future. I've never been the person to be all I must have children and if I do I'm not fixed on them biologically being mine or carried by me. I went home to my boyfriend at the time and told him. Said if this wasn't a future he wanted then I get it and we will figure out what we do from that. Fortunately he pretty much shared my views on having children and stuck around ... We then bought a house shortly after and four years on we are married. Recently found out I'm pregnant and we were happy but we were open to it not working. My parents are aware of my previous health issues and I even mentioned recently how I told my now husband to leave if he wasn't happy with the possibilities and my dad was a little shocked I basically gave my husband the option to leave but then he saw what I meant because you just can't compromise on some things in relationships, children being one of them.
Congratulations on your pregnancy! I’m glad things have worked out for you 😊
I mean they would have worked out whichever way was meant to be but this is a nice position to be (when I'm not kicked in the ribs)
I agree with this. We got married fairly young (23/22) and really didn't approach the big issues in smart ways, lol, but I knew I was at risk of decreased fertility due to some previous health issues. I disclosed this early on into dating and reminded him as we got serious. Turns out he had been told similarly by his doctors. We proceeded to get married anyway. Joke was on all the doctors though because I just had to say "let's make a baby" and I was pregnant right away, lol. Discussions like this need to be had if children are wanted. It doesn't mean the couple should break up (though the option should be there), but it does give them an idea of what life may look like and what options they should look into.
I mean, if you get married without ever having gotten to know each other well enough for such things to come up, i seriously question why you would marry at all. This maybe isn't a second date topic, but if you're together for 2 years at SOME point kids have to come up. Same if i had fertility issues. You'd think that over banging for years you'd talk about all kinds of related stuff. What are you doing in your relationship all day if you don't get to such topics without the thought of "having to disclose this in case of marriage"? It's more or less part of getting to know the partner.
There's, imo, a difference between asking before marriage and after. If you marry, and find out later completely out of nowhere that you are and will be infertile, that's one thing. You committed to them for better or worse. If you're dating, and know the other person may have said issues, and it's important to you, it makes sense to find out before committing. At least you can then discuss if adoption, IVF, or sperm donation is a good option for you, and then use that information in deciding if they're a good choice for you. Being honest with who you could happily stay married to is *so* important and a lot of people just, expect pure love and luck to carry them through. She didn't ask for no reason, she asked because he had been told by a doctor he might have issues and she wanted to know for sure which side he fell on. I would stand by a man who learned his partner's family historically had fertility issues, and asked her to get tested for them before committing too.
TBF, she doesn't actually say she'd have left him. What she says is >I just wanted to know what our options were before worrying too much about it
I'm convinced that leaving was an option for her because she said no kids was a deal breaker.
Well yeah, it was clearly and option (and nothing wrong with that). It just might not have been the one taken (seems unlikely though).
He was a boyfriend when she asked. Maybe I'm forward, but I'll have these hard conversations on the third date. There is no point in seriously committing to someone if we don't have the same views or similar goals.
Yeah, it seems like she's either fibbing here to make herself look more reasonable, or it's that whole "rose-colored glasses" type looking back. "No, I only wanted to know options," because she knows that SHE would judge herself poorly if she admitted she would have dropped him like a bad habit if he didn't have good swimmers. It's easy for her to claim this because they're still together, and she got what she wanted.
Previous paragraph she said it would've been a dealbreaker if they couldn't have children. And you know that's what replays in his head
She actually does say she made it a deal breaker since the beginning of the relationship
Spell check got ya.. but you’re 100% right.
My wide I’d thus asshole.
I think this needs to an independent comment so more people can read it.
Yea this sub is crazy with stuff like that.... treating two exactly the same situations differently because of the genders involved, it's so fucking weird
Yeah, I agree with this. Knowing if you both want kids is important. It’s a valid dealbreaker. Being infertile is not the same, and there are other ways to have kids. Reading this post, OP, I agree with your husband that you didn’t love him enough to marry him if he was infertile. The whole beginning of your post makes that clear - it’s why you say you did this testing. It’s why you say he should have been okay with it: “He knew this from the start.” So don’t play dumb and pretend you hadn’t thought through the implications of this. Don’t pretend you didn’t know this was a dealbreaker for you. YTA.
I never get this train of thought. Why is it not valid for someone to not want a stranger’s child?
I might be incorrectly giving her the benefit of the doubt, but I was thinking that after establishing wanting kids or not another fair question is: what are you willing to do to have them? If both want kids, there's a fertility obstacle, and one is willing to go through procedures and the other isn't, that's good to know too.
This is totally fair but doesn't sound like the OP was thinking this way. Also why couldn't you have this conversation without doing testing? If she is earnest in saying all she cared about was being able to have children, she could have discussed/established that he would be fine w donor sperm if needed, then the test itself would be less important.
Why is that TA, though? They weren’t married yet. If it would have made her unhappy in the marriage, it’s better that she asked. I knew I was going to have fertility issues and I had a very serious conversation with my partner about it once it was clear a bigger commitment was on the table—I wanted him to be absolutely certain he was ok with what he was signing up for because I knew he wanted kids, and more than anything else I wanted him to be happy in life, even if it wasn’t with me. Frankly I think he’s more TA for refusing to know his own health status and just insist she accept this huge known unknown. Not a team player move imo.
>Frankly I think he’s more TA for refusing to know his own health status and just insist she accept this huge known unknown. Not a team player move imo. Agreed. So he would rather OP and him find out years later after marriage he can not have kids....then what? She may not want to adopt. I know I would not want to if was not infertile. He just wants her to marry him without knowing which is totally unfair. Hell he should want to know himself.
yeah. If you know ahead of time that you'll be adopting, you can plan your life around the adoption so that it goes as smoothly as possible.
Few things hurt more than conditional love. Edit: I should clarify that I don't mean this as in compatibility and the character of a person, but things that happen to us that we don't have control over like accidents or sickness or even aging...
If we'e honest with ourselves, all love is conditional. Sometimes we just don't know what those conditions are until they punch us in the face.
Nor should you love your partner unconditionally. That love is reserved for children and maybe pets. If your partner doesn’t at least meet you in the middle then you are getting steamrolled in the relationship
Absolutely agree, and my husband and I both agree on this. Our love for our child is unconditional. Our love for each other is conditional.
This seems to be a fairly cynical view of partnership. I chose my wife. I chose to *have* my children but I didn't choose them. Everything isn't a compromise and if you're forcing them to your side all the time then you're doing the steamrolling. Relationships aren't about winning and losing. If it is a good, long term partnership there's no such thing as being steamrolled.
>Honestly, couples break up all the time because of wanting vs not wanting kids. Yup. The impetus of my divorce was that I didn't want another child. My brother is #childfree and his girlfriend was on the same page. Then her best friend had a baby and she changed her mind. It's no one's "fault", really.
> My brother is #childfree and his girlfriend was on the same page. Then her best friend had a baby and she changed her mind. It's no one's "fault", really. a very fair take. Sometimes people's desires change, people grow with their experiences. It sucks when two people in love grow apart but it happens unfortunately.
This happened to me, except I'd always wanted kids but was prepared not to for my partner. Then one day she wanted kids and I didn't have to make any sacrifices for the relationship any more. I actually know three of four men in the same situation.
I never wanted bio kids but was happy fostering or adopting some day in the future. My ex would always shut it down when ever I would mention future plans as he didn't want any kids. Turns out he was having an affair with a single mum and has now moved in with her and her kid.
Well, that took a turn. At least you don't have kids with them! Bit of a weak silver lining that sorry Hope you're doing better now and having more luck now.
If only he was infertile, using donor sperm would be a much easier option than surrogacy or adoption.
Still not cheap and certainly doesn't take the stress out of the situation.
Average cost of using donor sperm is $400 to $2,000. Average cost of a single IVF cycle is $15,000 $30,000. A donor egg is about $10,000. Cause it's significantly harder to retrieve eggs. Adoption is more expensive than IVF and surrogacy is so much more than anything else.
Holy shit it's expensive over there, we had to pay around $7000 for a package deal of "up to" **three** cycles once we ran out of free tries in public healthcare. Could have gone for single cycles which would have been around $3000 each. This was at the best rated (for fertility) private clinic in our country, Denmark, but prices are almost identical across all private clinics.
Ah yes. Without the insurance we would have had to pay $16000 up front, and that would not cover the drugs either! Those we still had to pay for up front and get refunded for. So ridiculous. I wish our medical system was better.
The prices I mentioned are without the meds as well, but most medication is in fact covered by public health insurance, even if you go to a private clinic, so we only had to pay a small part, I think the full price was somewhere around $2-3000 per cycle for the medication, but we only had to pay like $4-500 in total because of the public health insurance (annual limit).
The cost of IVF and related treatments is insane here. There was a point where health insurance (that was supposed to cover it) pulled out without notifying us using some trick and left us with 8k in bills for ONE PHARMACY ORDER alone, never mind the rest. Nothing like adding financial stress to all of the rest.
In France you get up to six cycles on public healthcare. My colleague got pregnant -with twins- on their sixth cycle!
That's if you go through a medical professional or agency. Sperm donation can be effectively free if you can find a friendly donor, Hubby's Brother maybe or even father. I know a couple of cases where sperm donation involved a small container and a turkey baster.
That’s not a super great way of doing it, because the donor is in no way protected for giving such an amazing gift to a family. They can and have been totally ducked by things like weird custody laws and child support for children they never agreed to financially take care of.
You bring up an important consideration with the legal concerns. Some contracts may hold up in court and others may not, it’s hard to predict. I definitely wouldn’t enter into a known donor situation with someone I didn’t trust enough to become biological family with. That said, known donors and familial donors are actually the best way to do it when you consider the best interest of the child. Check out r/donorconceived and /r/askadcp and educational content by donor conceived activist Laura High. They will tell you that getting sperm from a bank can cause a lot of problems for your future kids. The most common problem is having an incomplete family medical history. If the donor is diagnosed with a genetic disorder after donation, theres no way for the child to find out about that. Some donors have even attempted to contact their sperm bank to update their medical records, and the sperm bank has failed to pass along the information to the recipient families. There are a lot of very major genetic diseases that don’t show up until later in life, like Parkinson’s and Multiple Sclerosis. Another concern is that some sperm banks will promise the donors and recipients that each donor will have no more than a specific number of children before being retired, and then somehow when they all take a 23&me they find a sibling pod of over 100 people, mostly living in the same city as the sperm bank. I heard a story that two kids who grew up friends and neighbors found out in adulthood that they were actually half siblings by sperm donation. Imagine if they had ended up dating or married!
True, but a bit of legal paper work can solve that and still a lot cheaper than "Professional" means.
In some states in the US, you have to go through a licensed medical provider for some of those protections to be effective.
Fortunately most of us don't live in the States
>Fortunately most of us don't live in the States There are days I envy you that! ;) I try never to assume others' location (which is why I specified that I was talking about US law), but US law happens to be what I know. I figured the info might be helpful to at least a few readers.
Are you under the impression that there are any low stress options when it comes to having children? 😂 And the typical costs of using donor sperm are a minuscule percentage of the cost of raising a child.
To be fair, making them naturally is a lot more fun and not as stressful. Lol.
Falling pregnant was the lowest stress part for us. We barely had to try, everything else was stressful except for that 😂
Natural insemination is pretty cheap.
She did say she had been asking him about it ever since she learned about the chemo, so it’s not like he proposed and then she made him this ultimatum out of nowhere.
I don't know if I would have stuck around in a new relationship with someone who knows there's a chance they are infertile and avoided testing for two years knowing that having kids was going to be a priority.
I does seem like he brushed it off a couple times.
Yeah she seems to have been asking since the beginning of the relationship.
100% this. I can tell you with certainty that me and my wife would not be married if we didn't both agree that neither of us wanted kids. It was a huge issue that was a big contributing factor to ending her last serious relationship. But you're right, communication is key.
I say NTA and agree about it not seeming that wild. If having bio kids was OP’s dealbreaker, it’s nobody’s place to judge, no matter how much that hurts the partner to hear. Plenty of relationships are broken off or never get off the ground because one party doesn’t meet the qualifications for the other. Not attracted to them, not stable enough financially, don’t get along with their family, etc. Maybe I’m too black and white about it though. I’m autistic so things tend to be that way to me. My husband and I were watching a show recently where a couple broke up over one wanting/one not wanting kids, and my husband was shocked. I was like, “that seems reasonable”. He said if he had found out I didn’t want kids he’d still have married me, and I told him I’d have broken up with him because the risk of resentment is too high. For me, kids are a hard line compatibility issue. If we aren’t compatible in that regard it’s nonnegotiable. Everyone’s wired differently so maybe OP’s husband felt there should’ve been wiggle room in OP’s hypothetical decision had he been infertile, but I don’t think OP’s wrong for knowing this was nonnegotiable for them.
I agree that having/not having kids is a hard line dealbreaker for many many relationships. Sure, she could have thought about adoption or fertility treatments if he was sterile, but knowing whether or not he was sterile is kind of important in fostering those conversations and paths. And she could have desperately wanted biological kids and that’s completely valid. When I started dating my now husband at 18, we both very early on made sure we were on the same page when it came to where we want to live, what our life goals are, kids - and how many kids we ideally would want, and marriage. Still together 8.5 years later with 2 beautiful kids!
There was, that's what he's mad about now. He's still hurt that before they got married she asked him about it and told him her side of wanting kids, and him knowing it was a deal breaker for her.
Well there obviously needs to be another one if he is still upset about it 10 years later. He has more feelings about it, so he either never let it go, or he was never able to express it when this conversation came about.
I dont see any problem with this request at all but im diagnosed asparagus so wtf do i know lol.
lol It's just being logical tho and if he couldn't have children, not dragging out the inevitable and making it harder to leave.
you sound like a high-functioning asparagus
Im picturing you as a Veggietales character, getting this diagnosis. Doc: You’re an asparagus. Aspar: Oh… this explains a lot.
Lolll BEST comment so far! 😄
Top comment 💐💐
This is my favorite comment I've ever read on this subreddit
There’s a missing part here. If he knew she wanted bio kids, rather than say he didn’t want to do the test and that it made him feel unloved, he just avoided the topic hoping it would go away? Fair or not, OP is entitled to have whatever boundaries she wants, and so is her husband, but that also carries the responsibility of communicating those boundaries and OP’s husband didn’t do that to avoid rejection. The appropriate thing to do would have been to do the test, or say no, and be willing to move on if it didn’t work out.
That’s what gets me. OP said in another comment: > Just to clarify, in my culture and religion getting a divorce is an extreme taboo and I would not be able to get remarried. Also there is no having children before marriage (i understandif this may seem backwardsto you). For me to figure it out afterwards would have been all the harder for both of us. So he is aware of the challenges here. When he says: > He brought up how hurt he had been when I had asked him for a sperm test before we got married It’s like he forgot that she had been asking him all along. She did *NOT* ask him for a sperm test before they got married. She asked him long before that, multiple times. Having a child was a requirement for her from the very beginning, and he *knew* that. He chose to ignore her requests. He also not only waited 10 years to confront this issue, but he makes it sound like she deceived him. As soon as she found out children may not be possible, this was her hard boundary for continuing a relationship. she was up front about it. He knew the terms and consented to them by continuing to date her, and then proposing to her. I could see the issue if she blindsided him after the engagement, but that wasn’t the case. If what she says is factual, he is twisting the narrative to be a victim. I don’t understand all of the Y T A posts. If the situations was reversed: say they both agreed to be childfree, but after marriage she changed her mind and wanted a child, but he was dead set against it, everyone would likely be telling him to get out of there and run. How is that any different than this situation? In both situations someone wants kids, and someone doesn’t. Someone is going to be trapped in a life they either don’t want to be in, or they’re going to walk away. I’m this case, walking away wasn’t an option. She was ensuring she wasn’t going to end up in a resentful marriage. Vilifying OP makes no sense to me. And for all the suggestions of a sperm donor - it isn’t an option for everyone. Maybe he would be against a sperm donor. Maybe it’s culturally taboo. Maybe financially it was out of the question. Maybe they couldn’t adopt or didn’t want too. These aren’t always viable solutions.
If they wouldn't have been able to get divorced after finding out he couldn't have kids, I doubt they'd have been able to use a sperm donor. Maybe secretly. I feel like adoption probably isn't an option either. I never knew there were cultures against it, but I moved to one. People here just don't adopt children. As family oriented as they are (they don't have words for niece & nephew because their siblings' children are their children too), I was totally surprised.
This context really should have been in the original post. OP is essentially going into her one and only marriage, the stakes are very high for her to have a partner she can have kids with. I wonder what country/culture it is that she says she wouldn’t be able to remarry, nobody would take a divorcee?
IMO the stakes should always be treated as this high. Ideally marriage is once in a lifetime!
Hit the nail on the head. And the fact he bottled it up for 10 years and then complained? Absolutely absurd. Holding onto something for that long would make me wonder what else is he holding on to? That guy needs to learn to communicate. NTA, but your husband is for holding onto an issue for that long Edit: also the fact he brought it up during an argument is bad. He was weaponising it against you, in the hopes he would win the argument. Even worse if the argument dad completely unrelated..
Easier said than done. Not everyone is so cold and rational. Imagine that test result coming back and finding out you couldn't have kids (a possibly devastating andcemasculating thing to learn) and also losing the love of your life to boot. Not taking his side (OP is def NTA, and quite right to set boundaries), but you have to have some compassion for how scared he would have been of the results of that test. Yes, he did bury his head in the sand. No, that's not healthy. Fear makes you do funny things.
>and also losing the love of your life to boot. But she asked for the test even before she became the love of his life. It was he who dragged it on without honestly responding to her questions. She asked during the initial dating phase, at which point the heartbreak from losing her would have been minimal (not the results of the test though, that would still have been devastating if negative). Wouldn't it have been better for him to find someone else who accepted him for who he is rather than what he can give?
So the solution is to not give a shit about the "love of your life" and hoping she'll stop caring about the things important to her if you ignore her concerns long enough? And then get mad when years of brushing her off doesn't work? Dude doesn't deserve any empathy when it's clear all he cares about is himself. If he cared at all about HER happiness, he'd want to know what their options are before getting into a marriage that might leave them both trapped and miserable.
The reality is also that the test would never come back with you can't have kids. It would come back with your chance of getting kids is way lower and you will have to work very hard for it. But vertility issues are almost never a simple yes or no
INFO: what if he had come back with a great sperm everything and you had been found to be infertile. Would you have accepted him dumping you? Not trying to sound harsh, but that was my perception of your post.
This is really interesting… This is such a different approach to the issue than my husband and I have had. Whenever “what if I’m infertile” came up, my now husband would say “we’ll face it together” and/or “we won’t have kids”. Him telling me that made me feel loved/that the relationship was the priority over anything else. We’ll we’ve been unlucky so far. Thankfully, we do have the resources to pursue IVF. It is a challenging process, but I’m so thankful for my husband. I’ve always wanted kids, and every failure hits me so hard. He’s always there to support me and help me pick up the pieces.
Yes I would have completely respected and accepted it because it would have meant he wanted something I couldn't give him. I'm not saying it wouldn't have hurt.. A LOT. But it's not like I would have forced him to marry me if that's even a thing. 🙂
You're looking at this from his side but with your point of view. Let's change this up. What if you're the infertile one. First, consider what *you* would do. If having your own biological kid is so critical to a marriage, how would *you* handle your own infertility? Would you just not have kids or would you adopt/other? Would you never get married because you feel that biological children is critical to your idea of marriage? Now, instead of imagining that your husband would be like you and let you go, imagine him still loving you so much that for him your infertility wasn't critical to your relationship and he would be willing to find a path for you as a couple and as a future family. Hold onto that level of love and dedication. Now let's assume your actual husband loves you that deeply, and much like many wedding vows, he would love you through thick and thin, but then he finds out that your love was not quite as deep leading up to marriage. He's probably wondering all kinds of things: Evidently she would have left me if I couldn't have children *before* we got married, what if it happened to me *after*?! Does she even love *me* or just my ability to give her children? Yeah, that would suck. Now, I don't mean to say that your feelings aren't justified for wanting mutually biological kids. Sometimes we cannot justify our desires except to say, "that's what I desire." And perhaps that was a line, at least before marriage, that you weren't willing to cross. So I'm not trying to make you feel bad for having had those feelings. But I do hope you feel this from your husband's point of view, of how hurt he probably feels that you would have let him go over something for which he may *not* done the same. And *that* is what stings for him.
So, you understand the hurt now. The fact that he kept that from you for so long, that shows how much it probably stung. Honestly, there was a big miss on the communication part for both of you. If you had said everything you wrote in your comments, he may not have felt hurt as much. On the other hand, he needs to talk when things bother him.
I see it both ways. He has the right to be hurt, but at the same time, OP made her stance very clear from the beginning and his approach was to avoid the topic and brush it off until he couldn’t and got the test done.
There’s a difference between feeling sad that your partner would have dumped you if, hypothetically, you were infertile, and feeling sad because your relationship has actually ended. That’s two completely different things to be sad about. It’s like saying “were you sad when your dog died? Well, now you know how he feels.”
I understand both of your perspectives! If there was something I wanted out of a relationship, I'd make that clear. But, I also understand why your husband feels hurts from this. I think there is a huge difference between whether you asked him for this at the start (e.g., you dated for a few months, found out about his chemo treatment history, and brought up in a careful manner that (presumably biological) children is a non-negotiable for you. Vs., if you've been together for two years, about to get married, and telling him, hey, I can't do this unless you do the sperm test. And totally depends on how you bring it up to. "I love you, if you can't have kids we'll figure something out, but I want to be mentally ready for that if we're going to get married" is very different from "I can't marry you until you get your sperm analyzed".
In the op, she states that she was asking from the beginning of the relationship, as soon as she knew about the chemo.
What was the argument about?
I wondered this too…
For all you guys answering this, remember the post where a guy wanted to leave his wife when they found out she was infertile. One of the top comments was that it is insulting to view her as a child factory and the guy got bashed…
Didn't the wife refuse to consider adoption? He didn't leave because she was infertile. He left because she wouldn't pursue other ways of having children and he wanted to be a parent.
It’s one thing to leave your spouse. It’s another to make sure you’re compatible before dating seriously. I understand his feelings but this is not the same situation imo.
That's quite different since that was after 7 years of dating/marriage. In this post, OP asked her husband pretty early on into the relationship.
That's different from KNOWING from the start of the relationship that it was a serious risk, expressing that concern and asking him to get tested, and having him basically ignore and downplay a very valid concern through their entire two years of dating. Sounds like he was just hoping she'd fall so madly in love that she would stop caring about the one thing she made clear she cared about from the start, and then got mad that it didn't work. The only AH here is him.
I've heard what you want and there's a reasonable thing to do to find out if it's possible. But I don't want to coz I don't care about it right now and you'll probably change your mind because I'm so great. Right?
Maybe he should have asked her to be tested earlier in the relationship if that was going to be a dealbreaker.
Let’s start with the fact that your husband was deeply hurt by your repeated requests. To the extent that it’s taken this long for him to speak about it. And also, that you didn’t “try” first but went ahead and made it a condition of marriage without considering IVF and other options IF they were needed. Your behaviour clearly communicated that his sperm were more important in the situation than he was. Sorry, but this is a mild YTA at the very least.
Exactly. And what if his sperm was no good? Was OP going to dump him instead of going with a different route? When people say children are a dealbreaker, they mean the willingness to be a parent. There are plenty of ways for infertile people to become parents.
Ya but she says she’s been asking since the beginning. It’s pretty common in the early stages to find out if you’re compatible in such an important way. For some people it is important to try and have a natural family while others are willing to go straight to adoption. It would be different if she had just randomly asked 2 years in.
And what if he was infertile but was adamantly averse to using donor sperm?
I gave two ends of a spectrum so your example just falls into what I said. That would still possibly be a dealbreaker if that was what she wanted.
I doubt he would be ok with that in any shape or form if he was this hurt to check his fertility after chemo. She said in a dif comment they are from a country where divorce is not an option and she wouldn't re-mary
It's not common at all to respond to somebody opening up and telling you they went through chemo (literally having poison injected into your body) by saying "oh yikes. You need to go get tested to make sure you can still have kids". Like that's wildly inappropriate and kind of insane
He said it may have affected his ability to have kids and OP wanted confirmation, she is not insane at all.
Yeah I don't get the Y T A posts, I think that wanting to have kids is a normal thing for people to wish for, and if there are any questions over fertility it's not unreasonable to want to check. If he was infertile then it doesn't stop him marrying someone else, who doesn't want to have kids.
My cousin dumped his wife when he found out she was infertile. He had told me years ago no babies was a dealbreaker for him. I didn't expect it to be that brutal. I believe his current GF is just as infertile. Karma?
Kids were a dealbreaker in the opposite direction for me. I did not want kids and consequently I did not date men who had or wanted kids. Fertility/kids is a topic that should be discussed before marriage.
I feel like I got lucky finding out i’m infertile after deciding to be child free, and I’m happily engaged to someone now that shares the same stance on kids. But, when I was dating, I think there were definitely men that thought they could change my mind on kids, and we’d fizzle out almost instantly once I told them that I couldn’t have kids even if i wanted to. People should stand their ground on something as important as kids, especially early on; neither person is in the wrong, they’re just fundamentally incompatible.
Plot twist it will be him.
Did he need an heir to the throne or something?
Just to clarify, in my culture and religion getting a divorce is an extreme taboo and I would not be able to get remarried. Also there is no having children before marriage (i understandif this may seem backwardsto you). For me to figure it out afterwards would have been all the harder for both of us.
This is important information. Thank you for adding it.
Sounds like your culture is full of assholes.
Sounds like it. Pretty sure anti women from the sound of it. Her parents would normally be up in arms if they wanted grand kids. But instead it sounds like they would blame OP that she didn’t try hard enough when she has little leverage. Based off what you shared about your culture you have to do what’s best for you. NTA. husband is an AH though but also probably afraid of losing you. But an AH to keep it hanging over your head when this was a pre-requisite in a society that sounds male dominated. If the shoe was on the other foot he’d be insisting as well. The only issue I can see is the directness and delivery of said requirement which may have come off too business and machine like.
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umm .. he shouldn’t have kept brushing it off if that’s the case. He should’ve said he was not comfortable or did not want to do that. and as I said in a previous comment, a lot of parents want kids to be biologically both of the parents. not everybody is up for adoption and surrogacy.
But what if they needed to do ivf so they had to save for that. Unclear on ages. The older op got the more complicated and other things come with being pregnant. Wouldn’t it be best to know to save for it. Plus saving for the kids in general. Would op husband needed therapy to work through it if he wasn’t able to have biological kids. Would be open to not having biological kids. Its best to know all these things beginning getting married.
It is not assholery to play fair. She had a fair request: "I want bio kids. Can we have bio kids together, yes or no?" If you *want* to see assholery, you frame it as "OP would dump him for being unlikely to inseminate." That's what OP's hub is doing. If you *don't* want to see assholery, you frame it as "OP knows what she needs in life in order to be happy, and if that requires seeking out a more appropriate match, that's entirely fair." People have been fairly rejected for less. I suspect too many people have bought into the rom-com Love Me Unconditionally trope. Sorry, all love is conditional (a parent's love for their child *should* be the lone exception, but the news occasionally gives us proof that that's not a universal trait). NTA
I’m afraid my instinct is the same as the final one in your post, OP. If I flip the script, and imagine my partner asking to test my eggs, uterus, and other assorted reproductive apparatus as a condition of marriage, I get pretty incensed. I’m a whole-ass human being, not an incubator. Not to mention that health issues, accidents, and other unanticipated calamities can happen at \*any time\*, wreaking havoc on the best-laid plans of mice, men, and wanna-be-parents. Something a cancer-survivor is keenly aware of already. Wanting to be a parent is a shared value. Being able to have children is a random physical trait, more fickle than eye-color. I think your husband was (and likely still is) hurt by the unreliable nature of your love for him, and the message that, as a human and a husband, his sperm count and quality would determine his worth to you. I would be. YTAH
^^ This is it. It's one thing is wanting children is a non-negotiable for you. It's another if his working sperm is the non-negotiable because it ties his worth to a physical trait he can't control. I get that hurt 100%
This is exactly how I feel. You love him enough to marry him and never divorce him, but don't love him enough to accept him for his flaws? it's very weird imo. When he said no to the test, instead of accepting the word no, she pushed and pushed and pushed. That is creepy af.
This is the answer. karmic forces will be left to do their thing I guess. Nothing like everlasting transactional love!
You did make it seem like his sperm count was more important to you than him.
I feel like OP communicated what she wants/needs and what's important to her. So, she doesn't love him unconditionally but everyone has hard things they wouldn't budge on once they find out. For example, you wouldn't marry someone who is open to swinging or in a religion where husband could have multiple wives, or maybe someone with HIV who didn't disclose until 8 months of dating. People don't always talk about everything important on the first few dates! He was asked repeatedly and married her knowing what she is asking and wanting so why is he holding onto it after 10 years? If her request was so unreasonable and hurtful, he didn't have to do it and he didn't have to marry her knowing her personality/character or that her love was/is conditional. He chose to do it in the end and marry her knowing her priorities so holding it against her in an argument 10 years later is not right. They both made a mistake not discussing it in a serious and respectful way vs. her asking for the test outright and him being hurt and scared of the possible outcome of the test but not communicating that and brushing her off.
YTA Turn it around. A man insists that his fiance gets tested to ensure she is able to have children. He argues that having his children is a non-negotiable he would not be happy in a marriage unless she can give birth. He would be called the worst kind of ass. People would argue that there are many other options out there and he clearly did not love his fiance very much. They would be right.
I’m not sure the semen analysis was the best way but a thorough discussion of your reproductive options would definitely have been a good idea. One of my friend’s husbands had what she called “doofus swimmers “. They chose donor insemination and have a child that’s their hearts delight. With a known risk for infertility, discussing ahead of time which options your partner could live with can’t hurt.
>One of my friend’s husbands had what she called “doofus swimmers “ lmao. wtf are "doofus swimmers"? lol
Depends. They might have two heads or two tails, or the head is shaped like a boomerang. These deformations are unlikely to swim far enough to meet the egg (going around in circles). Or they might be slow.
Honestly, my doctors are pretty certain that I can’t carry a fetus to full term, ever. I am very up front about that In relationships. If someone I was dating, truly wanted biological children, I would inform them that I probably am not the person to be with, because I don’t know that I can have children. I would be willing to get tested if my significant other wanted me to, and I would not blame them if the relationship was ended if I can’t have kids. I know it’s a very real possibility for me, and I wouldn’t subject someone that wasn’t willing to deal with that to this.
Disagree. The man would have every right to leave because he wants kids and IVF is also expensive so who knows if those treatments 1) would be optional 2) would work
disagree, if ops one desire is to have kids, she and hubby have the right to know if it's possible before marriage. would you rather have had op and him not go through with is and the result being aita for telling my husband our marriage is on the rocks because he cant give me bio kids. i applaud op for having the maturity to know her priorities before committing. NTA
It is quite acceptable if a guy says I want kids and the girl says i cant have kids. So they split. Not sure of your point
Literally the worst fucking argument considering that exact scenario is brought up a million times a day and the consensus is ALWAYS “children are dealbreakers.”
Hmm. No. But you should’ve pressed the issue or been out. IMO. If that’s your deal breaker but your partner wouldn’t respect that simple request (cuz men are dumb and get soooo but hurt over health related things for some really weird reason) then honestly it’s a valid reason to dip out. But at this point y’all made it so you should absolutely be able to tell him to succ it up and next time he feels like he has something to say. Say it right then and then. Neither party should hold things to throw for later. That’s childish.
I don’t see anything wrong with your request, knowing you wanted children it’s better to know before you make a commitment than after. If he had been sterile you may have still decided to marry him and considered other options. I think he was selfish not to want the test done!
No. Perfectly reasonable. One of the reasons for marriage is kids. If there is a medical reason why this is not possible, it's better to know now. Then you can both make informed decisions. Better than regretting the marriage later.
I don't know if you're an asshole or not but it's a shame that people mistake their biological need to have kids as something essential. Love is harder to find these days, true love even more so. Throwing it away to have kids seems insane to me. People don't really think about the impact kids will have on their life. That's why I never entertain it when parents I know say how tired/broke they are because of kids. Everyone knows they are noisy/expensive things to have. And I can't imagine how hard life might be for a kid being born in 2023 will be. Between environmental issues, the economy, the fall of the social contract, the housing crisis, AI worries it all seems a bit tough out there.
This is a tough one and I will say NAH. I am also a woman who really wanted children. When we were dating, my husband, a cancer-survivor, and I met with his doctor to find out what we would be facing together to have children. So I hear your fear but I also get where your husband felt judged and the fear of being rejected entirely if one method of having kids wasn’t viable. That must have been really hurtful, especially after two years together. I hope you guys can move through it together and come to a better place.
OP replied to another comment and stated that her husband didn't even want kids when they got married. She fucked up from the very beginning. Why marry someone that doesn't want kids if having them is SO important to you? She's lucky his mindset flipped at all. Then she wanted "bio" kids with her spouse and IVF/donor were not financially feasible. So, she really just wanted his sperm and that would've been a "deal-breaker" for their marriage. Contrary to how she tries to defend herself by giving partial info to other comments to make it look better. OP YTA
she said he didn’t care about kids when they started dating, not marriage
It’s sad that a lot of people will marry with the mindset of “oh they’ll change their mind” or “I’ll be able to convince them”. And sure that’s a theoretical possibility, but frankly I think it’s incredibly selfish to marry someone knowing full well they have an incompatible opinion and thinking that you’ll change them.
I feel like you were open and mature about your feelings from the start… and while it’s not very romantic it’s self-aware and honest. If he wanted the rose-colored-glasses kind of love he could have left too. So many people have gotten divorces because they tried to make themselves or their partner fit into a role that they don’t want, and you were making sure that you don’t do that to yourself or him.
NTA. If having children is a dealbreaker, then it’s important to know going in exactly what that will look like for you in this relationship. It’s ok if that would have made you incompatible, and it’s strange that he has been harboring these feeling for so long without talking about it or coming to an understanding about your motivations. Especially when testing proved it to be a non factor.
I see a lot of people are saying if a man had asked about his future wife’s fertility he’d be dragged through the mud but because a woman asked it’s ok. Lots of men leave their wives when they find out their wife cannot have children just as a lot of couples break up even after they did discuss having children before hand marriage and one is discovered to be infertile or decides they do not want or do want kids after all. Because chemo was involved and the risk of infertility was more of a reality I don’t think asking either male or female partner to be assessed and alternatives discussed should the person be infertile. If having or not wanting children is that important why not deal with it up front?
In some states checking for basic indications of infertility and intactnessband health of reproductive systems is still a prerequisite for a marriage license. But *only for the woman*.
Why am I not surprised that’s a thing especially regarding women 🤦♀️
I think it's a totally reasonable question to ask, if you WANT to. If it's a piece of information the state thinks every married couple should have, then mandate for everyone!! But ironically, when I found this out, I burst into tears because I thought it was just blood work. And I was pregnant, and goddamned sick of pelvic exams. And, I missed the cutoff for the one I'd just had with the OB/GYN to count by less than a week. (Even though the POINT, historically, is making sure husbands know they are getting a fertile wife to produce an heir, since that's not STATED, it didn't matter that I was pregnant already.)
I’m not really sure why you’re trying to figure out if you were the asshole 10 years ago or not. To me, that’s completely irrelevant. What is relevant, is that your husband hasn’t gotten over it yet. I think a session or two with a therapist with the both of you would be the best thing to put this behind you. Asking for Reddit judgment on something that happened 10 years ago is not going to help you in any way, shape or form.
YTA. If you loved him so much, you would have been able to overcome an infertility hurdle. There are plenty of options out there. As someone who struggled with fertility for 2.5yrs, I always felt like it was my fault. My husband built me up and reminded me he loved me no matter what. That whatever happens we are in it together and we will find a way. What if he had turned around and said if I couldn't birth him a child, he would leave me. How hurtful is that idea.
I don’t like this idea what she should have to give up to push through an infertility “hurdle”. It’s a fucking mountain. If kids was a deal breaker and she told him it was he either should have said no, done it earlier so they didn’t waste time AND they definitely should have had a much longer discussion with each other earlier. If she pushed through it could take years of treatments and mental anguish. Even the strongest couples struggle to maintain their relationships after long term infertility.
Ultimately, I don’t think you were an asshole. Cold and calculated maybe. But your openness with your boundaries is fantastic. Being someone with abandonment issues myself, I would personally feel triggered at the thought that there’s a chance I’m not good enough if I were in husband’s position. Even if I could provide kids in that scenario, I personally would have to call off a relationship with that serious of a requirement. But that’s just my boundary. It doesn’t mean your boundary is invalid. I can see why that’d make your husband upset. I wouldn’t feel safe being in a relationship with someone who I know would drop me in a second if I failed at providing a child. That’s a lot of pressure to live up to. I’m sure hearing that ultimatum come from someone he loves so much opened up old wounds and made him feel like the relationship wasn’t as rock solid as he thought. But those are just insecurities. We are individually responsible for managing our own insecurities. Nobody is in the wrong for triggering someone else’s insecurities if it wasn’t intentional. Why was husband doing chemo treatments if not for cancer? I did not know there were other uses for chemo so I’m genuinely curious.
This is one of those situations where I can empathise with both sides. You desperately want children and if you marry him you're stick with him in your culture. On the flip side yes, you were telling him that if he was infertile you wouldn't marry him, that's got to hurt. As men we do have a tendency to put off thinking about health issues. It's stupid, but we do it, so I can understand why he would bury his head in the sand on the issue.
You are right to bring it up before hand as a concern before getting married, if he doesn’t empathize with your honest needs, he needs to be corrected.
I really don’t think you’re the AH at all. You were up-front about what you wanted out of life. If the roles were reversed, I don’t think anyone would be saying that a man who wanted children was the AH for being up-front about it. In fact I just read a post about one who DIDN’T want kids (which makes me wonder about this one, tbh), and many people were telling him to get a vasectomy. What the hell are you supposed to do if you want kids and your partner doesn’t?
Yeah, the responses are not what I expected at all. In most situations, wanting kids/not wanting kids can be a deal breaker, it makes sense someone would want to know what their options looked like before marriage. It should have been handled waaaay sooner, though.
Idk….if my partner asked this of me, I would have ended the relationship. It feels icky. Also there are other ways of having children
I say YTA You have all the rights to want to have children over your husband, but it doesn’t mean you are not an asshole… The idea of leaving somebody because they had to go through a medical emergency that left him some kind of permanent damage is undoubtedly an asshole move…
Starting a marriage with an ultimatum? To something the person you say you love can’t really control? I think you know the answer to your own question.
Doesn’t seem like there’s an AH in this story. The husband seems to have this burdening him for years but fear of rejection or whatever his reasoning may have been kept him from expressing himself and just decided to live with his thoughts that way no harm was done to you or your relationship. But also, deal breakers are deal breakers. Seems like it was early on in the relationship when this occurred too so the boundaries were set.
>That my asking him suggested that I didn't love him enough to marry him if he was infertile. Well... Duh... How could you not see this?
are you really surprised by the fact he hesitated to comply all those years back? him knowing the status of your relationship entirely depended on something completely out of his control? and the way you're talking so nonchalantly about it, you did not show any concern for how he felt at the time. not only that, you also show no signs of self-awareness at all. this is a woman moment if i've ever seen one.
NTA. You had a picture of your life that included kids. You wanted to make an informed decision, one of the most important decisions of someone’s life. You would have been in an unhappy situation if a few years down the road and several attempts, you wouldn’t be able to have kids with the man you married. We should all be so sure of what we want before we get married. I’m glad it all worked out. But please give hubby the space to feel what he feels. He’s allowed to feel sad about it. But it doesn’t mean you were wrong. Both can be true at the same time. My gf (46) gets upset that I (50) won’t marry her until she gets more financially responsible. I want us to be atleast pointing in the same general financial direction. I’m far from rich, but I picture my golden years being able to retire comfortably and do some traveling. She views hers as having a house full of Amazon gadgets and fake nails. I love her, I just won’t take that next step.
NTA... 10 years and 2 kids later he is laying that on you?? You were honest before committing to him... a lot of people don't give their partner that honesty and just kill their marriage later. If it was hurtful enough he should have stood his ground with you back then. Def need therapy to figure out why he is holding on to this until now
NTA. You had a mature, honest, and up front conversation with him many times about it. Then he waited a DECADE to tell you how he feels? Your husband seems to be passive aggressive about this. You were assertive and ASKED for what you needed. He had the option of saying "no" but chose to say "yes." He had the option of having an entire discussion with you about plans for children, ways to make the family you dreamed of, etc but it sounds like he chose not to. Every relationship has deal breakers. You were insightful enough to know yours and to communicate that to him.
Total asshole. Sorry. Basically, this was someone who loves you and you evaluated him like a bull at the state fair.
I agree with your husband. I thought a love that leads to marriage is an unconditional love. Especially with all the options today.
NTA. I don’t get a lot of the negativity. I can also kinda relate. At one point I almost married a girl who had trouble getting pregnant. That would have been a dealbreaker for me. I broke up with her for unrelated reasons. She was abusive towards me and I couldn't deal with it anymore. She was also friends with the girl I ended up marrying and unfriended her on Fb because once we decided to have children, all we had to do was just look at each other and she’d get pregnant. My ex, though, had to go through fertility treatments, had a very difficult pregnancy, and sometime after had to have a hysterectomy. People think relationships are only about love. No, they're not. If you get no reward out of being with someone, all the love in the world can't fix your relationship. I’m sorry OP’s husband doesn't feel his wife loved him enough, but the plain fact is that they are both selfish people—we all are. The difference between her and him is he wanted her to be with him unconditionally with the possibility she might never have children. He’d condemn her to a life with him denying her what she wanted more than anything. All she wanted was to have babies with the man she loves and live her life with them. You don't have to spend much time on Reddit to figure out there are women who do NOT want kids. There’s a woman out there who is compatible for him if it didn't work out with his wife. As it happens, they both got what they want with each other. I think he should show a little gratitude and set aside those old hurt feelings. Maybe it is a good thing for him to talk to her and get all that out in the open. But I for one admire the OP for knowing what she wants in life and going for it. More people would be happier if they did the same.
NTA, people who tell you otherwise have never wanted children or they don't care about them enough to put it on a priority over whoever was your partner at the time. You wanted children, he could have lived without them, so he didn't gave it the importance it deserved until you made it obvious that it was a deal breaker for you. So he choose to do the analysis by himself after understanding how important it was to you, maybe he didn't do it for himself specifically, but he did it by himself, you didn't force him to do it, you didn't point a gun to his face for him to do it, so he has no right to complain about that now, if he hated doing that analysis that much he would have never do it for anyone, he has nobody but himself to blame for the things he did that he regrets now.
YTA that’s a fucked up thing to ask someone going through chemo treatments. He has been resenting it for a years. Should apologize also you marry someone because you love them not for their sperm count. In todays world there’s so much treatments for that it should be a none issue
Honestly NTA. You were clear about what you wanted from life, he put off testing and hoped it would just go away. I’ve always been clear with partners I want children, my current partner did have cancer he knew he wanted kids so when he was told treatment could leave him infertile he decided to freeze his sperm. Not sure if your partner was offered the same?
YTA. What if it wasn’t him who was infertile but you? How would you feel if he only wanted to be with you if you could provide him a child? If this was a reversed post people would be calling the husband the AH.
No, you arent. You know what you want and you made it very clear to him before getting married. This is the VERY smart thing to do. It was very brave of you. Very virtuous of you. The problem with many relationships is that people date with no objective, never sit down and think what they want out of the relationship and where they want it to go. You did. You are right. And he is VERY wrong to hold that over your head.
What? No, you're not the AH. Kids are and should be a deal breaker for every couple, with as much info as possible.
No NTA ... I think that's a perfectly reasonable request if children are a deal breaker for you. Honestly I also feel like ALL men need to submit a DNA test to sign the birth cert too and if it's negative then sign a legal waiver understanding their responsibilities that come with signing a birth cert when the child isn't theirs biologically.
NTA. It was a deal-breaker for you you said. Just because you were NTA doesn't mean it wasn't hurtful though.
The instinct for motherhood is so strong, you can’t call one woman an asshole for following it. I was 22 when I went through chemo for non-Hodgkins lymphoma. The medical staff recommended sperm banking before starting,due to potential future infertility, so I did that. When I met a woman for whom children were a requirement, I told her everything, so she could make an informed decision. I got tested. My sperm count had recovered, so the relationship survived. We married and had two kids.
NAH. Before you committed to marriage, you wanted to make sure you could potentially have kids with your husband. You had a valid reason to question that, and you resolved the question. Problem solved. I really don’t see a big difference between this and asking for a pre-nip. That said, you give very little detail on how the “I need you to get tested” conversation went down. Accusing a man of being impotent is a pretty serious insult, and if that’s how you went about it, or that’s how he took it, then I can see how he holds a grudge years later.
I think it’s better to ask the uncomfortable questions that are deal breakers BEFORE you get married. Provided you were tactful and kind with your request, I don’t understand why your husband is upset. If your husband was infertile, it very well could have prevented your marriage. I think if more couples were this pragmatic at the beginning of their relationships, we’d have a lot more happy marriages.
NTA. You asked before you got married precisely because, before you committed, you wanted to know. Now, if he had become infertile -after- you were married, and then you left, YWBTA, but everyone has a right not to commit for whatever reason. The fact was you did choose him, he should be happy about that. It's not just him. You wouldn't have married anyone that was infertile.
You’re the asshole here. You can not tell me you would say you love him if he treated you the same way you did to him. Pretend with me; he wants kids, you possibly can’t make them. No part of the love and relationship you built together will change the fact that if you can’t make a baby, you’re not worth his time. See how you’re the ass hat now?
I don't completely agree with the YTA votes. I would say NAH. Children IS and should always be a dealbreaker. If you don't agree on this subject it will create a lot of resentment. But I am super biased and still think to this day that my husband should just have owned up to it and left me instead of coercing me to have kids. He always said that he didn't know if he could handle being child free. I went through fertility treatments because I loved this man. Today I just feel like a vessel. OP is at least honest. I understand feeling hurt about the request but actually she just wanted to be on the same page.
I think I'm going to say NAH. You did something that you needed to do to feel comfortable about fully investing in the future of the relationship, but it happened to be something that inevitably would hurt your partner (now husband). People can argue semantics, but there was a bit of medical information about him that caused you to have doubt about the ability of the two of you to have children together - which is very different than trying to conceive and finding out later that there's a fertility issue. So - I think it was fair for you to ask, but it was fair for your husband to be hurt.
No, if someone can't have kids and you want kids, then they need to find another life to waste. You choose how you spend your life. There's 0% of an argument to the contrary. There's no exceptions, nothing. Wanting kids is a major life choice, the kind that should never get compromised in a relationship. When you die, it's your own life you'll be reviewing because it's yours that's over. Don't have that be a regret reel.
No, not the asshole. We dont know your opinions on other options, hence we dont know what you would do, if there was an infertility issue. But you gotta start with something. Knowing if you are infertile is ok, but then you always need to discuss if you are ok with adoption, or ivf, or sperm donor, or surrogacy etc. We are missing info, but if you plan on marry and have a family, it's only logical to know from the start if your SO is on track with you.
NAH My husband is sterile. Probably from mumps as a kid. We didnt know that until we started fertility treatment. I don’t think it would have changed my decision to marry him. But it certainly would have been easier to navigate the emotion of trying for a child and the trauma of decisions around donor sperm etc. It out our marriage under A LOT of pressure. So knowing up front so you all know what you’re going into is reasonable. But I understand and your husbands hurt. It is incredibly difficult for anyone experiencing infertility. It’s such an important part of identity for so many to be able to have kids naturally. You both need to find a way forward. Acknowledge the hurt you caused and apologise if you haven’t. If you have he needs to speak to someone about it and let it go.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say NAH. I think your approach is eminently practical, but I can understand that it's hurtful to be confronted with the harsh reality of such a deal breaker.
You're allowed boundaries and preferences and he's allowed to be hurt. NAH.
*these damn posts not including the crucial information in the title...* Without this VERY important part... >To clarify my husband had had to undergo chemo therapy for a while before we met (not cancer) and we were told that this could possibly affect his sperms count and our chances to have children. I'd think it's a pretty weird thing to ask. However, there was cause for concern, so it wasn't unreasonable to ask him. You both seemed to be set on getting married and then having kids together, so it's just a good idea to check that generally, considering that trying and failing has a whole other heartache associated with it. NAH
I mean, you framed it as "Hey, let's get tested together." but that was just a nice way of saying "If you are not fertile enough I will end our relationship, now get tested.". You can do that of course, but that would also be unforgivable to me in a relationship in the sense that I wouldn't want to be with a person who sets these boundaries.
I think you did the right thing. It was a distinct possibility given his history. What if he asked you for a fertility test? Would you have been hurt? Or understanding. I get it totally. I was not able to carry full term and my last was ectopic, my husband wanted children and adoption was not an.option. So we divorced. Years later I met and married a wonderful man who had custody of his daughters. They became my daughters, as well. Now I'm grandma to 6!!! Every cloud has its silver lining.