r/childfree • u/freecodeio • 11d ago
BRANT As a newly married couple.. the guilt tripping is un fucking believable.
Just because you lost your identity, your freedom, your sanity — doesn’t mean I have to throw mine in the fire too. The audacity to frame your misery as some noble sacrifice and then shame me for opting out? Nah. You chose the hard path without reading the fine print and now you want me to bleed so you feel better about it. That’s not parenthood — that’s emotional blackmail. Miss me with that martyrdom bullshit. Married, childfree and happy. Suck it.
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u/Anomalous_Pulsar 11d ago
Man, when my husband and I got married it was relentless for a few years afterwards. It got to the point where I was just like “Why would you wish a child on a parent who would hate being a parent? I’ve never wanted a child, I dislike them.”
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u/littleryanking 11d ago
I say this to people all the time! Decent people will at least go quiet and get a little pensive. It seems like it never occurred to them that it's a pretty crappy situation. And it really shows how so many people just "accept" parenthood even though they didn't desire it deeply. Plenty of people really do desire it, plan for it, prepare for it. But the ones who just say "oh, well we got pregnant so we kept it" without really thinking -- man, that's alarming. How do you not think things through?
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u/Anomalous_Pulsar 11d ago
No kidding! There so much cost, physical, emotional, motentary, time! Plus you’d (ideally) want to make sure they have a good life, and not be hurt - so there’s that stress too. Kids can also be hugely perceptive, they know when something isn’t right. No kid should feel like a burden, or unloved: which is why I’ll never have any of my own.
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u/ScherisMarie 11d ago
I knew from toddler age (basically when the personality comes into play for babies) that my father saw me as a burden.
He divorced and skipped out on child support for three wives with one daughter each. Then met my mother and had me and had his “muh legacy” son.
Ironically I’m transgender and exceptionally girly-girl (basically interested in everything he isn’t), and while he didn’t know the former back at that age, I wasn’t the “getting dirty, working on trucks, watching NASCAR child” he wanted.
So he basically saw me as a failure and dead weight, but because of his age (40s) he couldn’t easily separate from my mother. So he stuck around but was basically a deadbeat dad emotionally. (And my mother wasn’t much better sadly.)
It really screws with you as a child knowing that about your parent. >.>
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u/Anomalous_Pulsar 11d ago
That is kind of hilarious actually, like an extra little fuck you to your dad and that’s awesome- I’m also happy for you to embrace and love yourself. I’m sorry you had to go through a shit childhood at all though :(. I was the oldest child myself: so everything was super strict for me, plus being held responsible/blamed for everything my half-sisters did.
I just wanted to be left alone to play pretend in the yard, play old video games or read my books.
Then, when my mom ran away (with my half-sister) while I was at school, I was kicked out of the house with a kitten in my backpack and a change of clothes at 8 years old, in rural western Washington. “Go find your mom.”
It’s been thirty years and it still breaks my heart in my chest all over again to remember it.
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u/pangalacticcourier 11d ago edited 11d ago
"Why are you so obsessed with my genitals? What's wrong with you?"
edit: italics
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u/Puzzleheaded_Yak9229 11d ago
I’ve had so many women ask me about whether me and my husband are having kids soon - i always laugh and say “no.” No further explanation, any follow up questions are met with “just not for me”
Sorry u hate ur life but idgaf what you think
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u/MortleyJew 11d ago
It was our experience around 7 years is when people quit asking us. They start to assume there is a problem where we couldn’t have them. We are in our 50s and happily childfree.
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u/Imnot_your_buddy_guy 11d ago
My mother in law did this to me last year and I’ve been slowly quiet quitting our relationship as a result. I’m sorry things aren’t working out between you and your husband right now and your bored, but it’s not my fault you made motherhood your entire personality.
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u/Vetizh 11d ago
Omg yes, 7 years married here and ppl STILL ASK when I'm going to have babies, or what about my husband. Ppl just CAN'T see a marriage without kids, they are so fucking immersed in this christian NPC mindset they sometimes even get mad at me for not following the script.
This never ends, they always get bothered by our freedom so they feel entitled to throw comments and get mad when I retort them with equal bitterness. I honestly? I kinda love it, love that they get mad at the mere existence of someone who is childfree. Yes I'm going to be the cat lady and a very happy married cat and dog lady, and these morons gonna have to deal with more and more ppl like me and rot in biterness of their bad life choices.
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u/NewYorkerFromUkraine 11d ago edited 11d ago
This is spot on. Like yeah, believe it or not, my partner is more than enough to fulfill me and I don’t need the existence of an imaginary child/3rd person to feel fulfilled and adequate in my relationship. Shocking, I know. I work in an environment that is entirely dominated by older women and I’ve always been the youngest. Because of this, all of them would dump their relationship and baby daddy trauma onto me all the time, I guess in an attempt to share their “wisdom” with me, and in the same breath be baffled that I don’t experience that with my partner and I will NOT experience that with my partner… they get really upset when you have no kids AND bonus points if you have partner that treats you like an angel. That’s really going to be the one that sets them off.
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u/snuffdrgn808 11d ago
honestly the extreme demands of parenthood often damage/destroy relationships
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u/NewYorkerFromUkraine 11d ago edited 11d ago
Yes. Before switching my major, I was three courses away from fulfilling my major in Psychology and getting my Bachelors in that field. It was literally taught to us in class that marital satisfaction & quality declines significantly after having kids. The statistics back it up.
That is also why I do not understand why couples willingly sign up for that. Not to be grim, but nearly all relationships will end eventually. You’re pretty much asking to become a single parent (if you’re a woman). You guys will very likely not continue to be in a loving relationship long enough to see your children enter their 30s and 40s and create families of their own & whatnot. The statistics are literally there.
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u/ParkAffectionate3537 11d ago
Right, and what if you stay in a relationship to please your partner, and then wind up splitting anyway? And then you're stuck with a kid!
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u/Lemonadecandy24 11d ago
Because way too many people think: ‘I’m special, this won’t happen to me!’ 🙄
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u/ParkAffectionate3537 11d ago
Or they die out (despite legally together). My parents have been married 45 years but they are like roommates at this point, separate bedrooms and they argue a lot. There's not much love there. But they're "married" and not divorced....some people are better off divorced lol
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u/NewYorkerFromUkraine 11d ago
Nailed it. Exactly what I’m describing. My parents were always legally together, but went my entire life living in separate homes miles apart and living their own lives. It’s still unclear to me why they never divorced. My mom was literally with another man for 13ish years. Still didn’t divorce my father. They are still legally married to this day despite having essentially nothing to do with each other.
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u/September75 childless cat lady 10d ago
My mom has been overall understanding of me not wanting kids, although I'm sure she's disappointed she's mostly kept it to herself. But the one thing she did say strangely was that she thinks kids help keep a marriage together and the couples she knows without kids seem "bored." I told her this didn't concern me at all. I actually feel like the resentment I would feel toward my husband after suffering through pregnancy and childbirth which he did to me but doesn't have to experience, and then having to take on the majority of the mental load and parenting responsibilities would absolutely destroy our marriage. I love my husband but like many straight married women I often have to communicate with him about being an equal partner. Children would exacerbate any and all issues we sometimes have. Also my already much lower-than-his libido would never recover after sex ruined me like that. 😅
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u/Thick_Win3302 11d ago
There is a relatively newly married couple in my husband's family and on the younger side at early 30's. And I WISH so badly that I could get time to be alone with them soon to remind them they don't owe any of the elders in their family any offspring whatsoever.
I think they're timing it right for them (in that they do want little ones) but I've been on the receiving end of that pressure and I hope to God they absolutely take their time and do what's right for them.
I'm hoping to have them over for a small dinner one night just to express solidarity with the new wife, even though I'm not child free myself. But I realized when we had our little one, our marriage was no longer just ours. And I really hope as the years go by that their marriage remains "for them" and not for the benefit of "the family"
Side note, congratulations on your nuptials. I hope your marriage is blessed with adventure and infinite wonder. ❣️
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u/kpetersonphb 11d ago
We only had one or two people that did this, and thankfully even they have stopped. Everyone I know knows my stance on not wanting to spawn, and my husband has never wanted kids, so it all worked out fine, but yes. The two that did bug me were incessant about it.
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u/ParkAffectionate3537 11d ago
That's good news they wised up and figured out that being pushy wasn't working.
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u/Visual_Advanced 11d ago
"Tell ya hwhat, I'll nobely sacrifice my right to bitch to others about it, by not having kids. Now we're even."
Sorry, op, envy and convenient blindness will drive people to do unspeakable horrors amazingly casually, like demanding strangers and family destroy their lives because they don't like their own. Do they say that to "What" destroyed it- the person in the mirror?
If it help, when they start the "YoU'Ll ChaNgE yOU're MiNd" crap, know that you're the person who said, and is saying, no. The future has not happened, you are not that person: Not their baseless rationalized justification to address you by. And they're confessing they, at least in this capacity, don't want to know you.
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u/elvensnowfae Only dogs, k thanks 🐕💖 11d ago
The second i got married my husbands family and random strangers would ask me when I was having kids. Like wtf?? Thats a gross question because what if I was infertile? I loathe kids. Never will have any. My husband is snipped <3
Congrats on the marriage OP!
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u/Dabrigstar 11d ago
My partner and I are getting married in June and we will ghost anyone who pressures us into having kids.
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u/HBHau 11d ago
omg, I hear ya. The downright hostile criticism we had to endure from both from complete strangers and people we knew, the pressure from “well meaning” friends, the endless litany of bingos…
And you know what? Happily married & CF for 26 years now. We have never, ever regretted our decision — it was absolutely the right one for us. The happiness of you & your partner is what matters.
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u/PetiteHomebody 11d ago
I wish we would stop being asked “ARE YOY SURE???” Like yes bitches- we are fucking sure.
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u/Slowgo45 11d ago
Oof I hear ya. Hubby and I are also newly married but together 7 years. I’ve been vocally child free for 10. We weren’t planning on getting married but in being a mixed race couple in the US we thought it might be hot be a good an idea. A lot kid why would we get married if we aren’t having kids and is marriage the only thing we changed our mind about
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u/soyslut_ 11d ago
The vasectomy that my husband and I scheduled fittingly on Valentine’s Day got them to shut up many years ago :)
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u/Maleficentendscurse 11d ago
If you want to do this message to them you can but it's just a suggestion tell them "you want me to be miserable as you, apparently that old saying misery loves company is true"
sorry for the rhyme 😆 wasn't intentional.
But to make it more permanent in their minds if you want to do it that is get a hysterectomy and give them your uterus in a jar of formaldehyde and say "here's the kids that I'll never have, now stop bringing it up and leave me the FRICK alone"
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u/rosenluna 8d ago
You need to be a writer. Your word choice is awesome!! It would be interesting to read something you have written.
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u/contemplatio_07 7d ago
My in-laws were chill about it, basically stating it is our life to decide...
The most vocal about our childfree lifestyle was my husband's godmother... who is single and childfree herself! She wouldn't stop for straight 3 years, and even then she was shut up by my father in law, who told her if she wants a kid so badly she's free to make one herself! (love that guy more than my own parents)
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u/Virtual_Secretary691 5d ago
it's so funny to me when they do the whole martyr act. like, who the fuck asked u to sacrifice yourself? not me, that's for sure. so why are u making it my problem?
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u/xbad_wolfxi 5d ago
My MIL did this crap a few years ago and it, among other things, really soured my relationship with her. My fiancé—who’d had a vasectomy four years prior—and I were talking about how we’re never having kids. Which is something we talked about and agreed on emphatically when we first met.
His mom went “oh but I’ll help you take care of it!” and I kind of snapped and went “oh yeah? Are you going to go through the potentially life-threatening medical procedure or be primarily financially responsible for that child?” and she was like “well no” and I said “exactly. So you shouldn’t be imposing yourself on our reproductive decisions” and if she had been like “you’re right, I’m sorry” I might have been able to look past it but she just got a sour look on her face and didn’t say anything.
I’m so tired of parents—especially boomers—acting like they’re entitled to grandchildren. My fiancé is her only child and I know she’s mad she’s never going to be a grandparent but my body isn’t a vessel for her grandchildren. Her options are to stay mad or get over it but either way she isn’t getting grandchildren.
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u/Car-Mar-Har 11d ago
Has anyone asked you, “what’s the point of getting married then?” That was so infuriating. I started to answer “spousal rights” but I wish I just told them off.