BeenThere; this is a hard subject & can not fully relate since I have a child that I love more than anything in the world.

However, you reply to my post & helped me understand how it is very hard to continue a relationship with some one that lies & cheats. Thank you so much for sharing your pain.

Fortunately, your situation was a bit different than mine. And I hope that your DH spent his 40 years of marriage trying to make up for his mistake & treated you with love & respect for all the 40 years.

If that is the case, all you can do at this point is to let go of that bad memory. Otherwise, it will eat at you for the rest of your life; it might even destroy your marriage & being alone it's not much fun either. So, if it is possible; please forgive him for your OWN sake.

From what I gather it's too late for you to have kids at this age; not sure how life would have worked out with someone else; not much that can be done about that now.

I would have rather have my soon to be ex cheat on me before he said "I do!" than 13 years later!

Hope this helps!

not4ever, thank you so much for your caring reply. I think you would be a great friend, I wish you lived around the corner! I have been lucky to have a daughter but my sister never did and she absolutely agonizes about it. Her husband never wanted children and she agreed not to have any out of love for him. Now she wishes she would have just disregarded what he wanted, thinking he would love a child once it was born. On one hand, she wanted to please him and felt it would have been wrong to have children he didn't want. On the other hand, she feels he should have loved her enough to let her have what she desired most of anything in the world. What a mess. People seem to come to me for advice on things and I just don't know what to tell her on this. What can I tell her?? : its too late now and just live with the decision you made, which I'd never do because I don't want to hurt her.

Yes, our husband situations are similar in a way. I really do admire the stance you are taking. What it comes down to is an issue of self respect, which I was sorely lacking. Our marriage hasn't been what I would have wanted ideally but whose is? You know what they say: forgive but don't forget. Is that what you would want out of YOUR marriage? I think you are doing the right thing.

I do not know the age of your sister, so I do not know if it is indeed too late. However, just off the top of my head without even thinking about it, I know 6 different families who have adopted children. One family adopted 2 sisters who are pre-teens through foster care, another adopted a child in the states (private adoption, and one from Russia), two other families adopted a child through private adoption, and a relative adopted siblings who are in grade school. Oh, and another are on their 3rd adoption of little girls from China. Would she consider something like this? Is she patient and good with children? Perhaps she could consider becoming a foster mother?
***If she is not up to this, perhaps she could teach at a pre-school...little children ADORE their teachers, and will wrap her in love on a daily basis!

I could not imagine my life without my children, I love them so much, its hard to understand untill you have one. If you even ask if you will regret it then you probley will. Children are to me what makes my life so happy, I love xmas and all the holidays because they make them so fun. I also am really close to my mom and I want that very much with my kids when I get older so that I have someone around and also have grandchildren.

My sister is too old now to have children. She would have loved to adopt or to foster children, in fact, over the years she talked to her husband about both of those options. But he did not want children, period. He knew how important having a family was to her but he didn't seem to care. Now she wonders if he ever loved her at all if he could ignore something so vital to her. Its a really sad situation.

As a childless by choice person, who is very happily married to same, I will offer this to your sister: her husband's refusal to have children is by no means a reflection of his love for her. People who do not want children feel just as strongly about the joys of life w/o kids as those who want kids.

It is very unfortunate that people with such opposing life plans got married in the first place. Marriage is more than love; it is also sharing life goals. Your sister's marriage was doomed from the onset, IMHO. There was never a way for both people to have their life dreams fulfilled; one was going to be disappointed and in this case it's your sister.

There has to be more than the children issue going on for her to question whether or not her husband truly loves her. Or she simply does not understand how someone could not want children. Like your sister's husband, I honestly feel that having children would ruin my life; your sister feels the exact opposite.

It is a sad situation, one for which there is no answer.

my wife and i are childless by choice, but i think both people need to be honest and up front, going into a relationship about this. when i dated and things got serious, i was always up front that i didnt under any circumstances want children in my life. when dating my now wife of 19 yrs, 1st thing she said was if i wanted children, date someone else, because she wasnt having any. this is something that need to be ironed out, up front. good luck hope things work out for you.

My husband and I are child free by choice. This is my second marriage and my first husband and I divorced because he decided he could not live without children. (We had agreed no kids before getting married).

You sister can live with her decision and stop agonizing or she can divorce and try to find someone with kids to marry. (Can't imagine that would be a picnic!) But she should not try to force children of any age on her current husband.

We're childless by choice, and happily so. The only thing we're a bit concerned about, is who is going to look after our interests when we are elderly and need help. Both my husband and I are taking care of the affairs of dependent parents -too much like having kids for our tastes, but what can you do :) We are beginning to realize we're going to be in trouble in twenty five years or so. But as a nurse working at a hospital, I see having kids doesn't always mean they will be there for you. Hopefully by the time we need it, there will be a big business caring for aging baby boomers, and it will be easy to hire someone to manage our care for us.

My sister has never had any children, only because she can't seem to find the right man. She is now in her 40's and has pretty much given up on having children and almost on ever getting married. I feel really bad for her and I have always told her in time the right one will come along but that hasn't proven to be the case. She used to get really depressed and think something was wrong with her and would ask me why she's not married and she's always wanted children. I would tell her don't look at my life and say how I have been married twice already and have a daughter because the first marriage turned out to end in divorce and I'm on my second. I told her the goal is to get married once and pray that works out because divorce can really be devastating and back then I would have chosen to be single if I saw the divorce coming. My daughter is 20 yrs old now and she has been a true blessing so I do feel sorry that she didn't have the opportunity to experience motherhood.

We don't have any after 12 years of marriage but begin to talk about it.

Regrets come into play - either way. Money, time and energy are all reasons why not to do it. I guess selfish, but at least we admit it.

Today's society is not good and my wife, as an elementary teacher, sees way too much bad stuff in today's world.

We're still young enough but are trying to come to terms with it for sure.

Won't do it unless one of us can stay home to raise it. Don't know if we'll ever be able to swing that though.

Alas. The responsible will always be outbred by the irresponsible.

"When you own a big part of the bloody third world, the babies just come with the scenery." (Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders.)

Would that there were sufficient responsible parents to go with them.

Alas.

Yes, I regret it.
My husband is 10 years older than me and had two children from a previuos marriage. We didn't discuss having children before we married which was a mistake. He told me that if I wanted any I had to have one in the first year we were married because he wasn't going to put off retiring to raise a kid. So, I decided I would quit taking the pill about 6 months after we were married. When I told him of my decision he went out of his way to talk me out of it. Saying mean things, like how my body would look afterward and that he wasn't sure if he would still be attracted to me. Also how we would have to work opposite shifts and would never see each other because he wasn't having his kid in day care. I was really hurt by what he said and decided if he could be so mean to me he really didn't want another child and it wasn't fair to the child to have a dad that didn't want him/her.
I do not get along with his, now grown, kids. His son is now in prison and his daughter has 3 kids of her own by two different men.
I see my own mom needing my help and know that when I am her age there will be no one to help me.
I have told him I am resentful of him for this but he says he made the right decision. At this point I do not feel loved by him. Not only for this reason but this reason is a big part of it. I really do not even want to be married to him anymore.
I know I have made my own bed and now must lie in it.

"I know I have made my own bed and now must lie in it."

Thinking like this stops people from taking control of their life and finding ways of improving their situation.

If you are in an unhappy situation you certainly don't have to just put up with it. You can change the situation. You can develop the wisdom of knowing what is best for you, and act on that wisdom.

Pestee42...perhaps you could look for ways of channeling your sorrow at not having children into a positive way. For instance I heard today that there were 70 volunteers at a local school here, that was struggling to cater for disabled children. There is always a way to help other people and at the same time use your latent mothering instincts.

I think the world needs all sorts of people, with their unique experience. You are unique you have a lot to offer. You know what it is like to miss out having children. You know how that feels.

I hope my words inspire you into action. Don't "settle" for your situation..

All the best for you.

Ex wife and I had this discussion before we married. I told her that I wanted to wait for at least two years before starting a family. I saw too many of my friends who got married, had kids right away, and then split after the kids got bigger. I felt it would be unfair to start a family and then split up and she agreed.

Well, two days after the wedding guess what I started getting? Yep, the old "Gee wouldn't a baby be nice, etc." I reminded her of our discussion and she said she thought I wasn't really serious when we discussed it. What?$#

Long story short, we divorced after 3 years (a variety of reasons, the biggest one was she wanted a large family and a house with a picket fence next door to mommy and daddy) and I never regretted not giving in to her (and mom and dad's) wishes. Add to that the fact I was career military, the picket fence routine wouldn't have worked.

I did volunteer work in a senior citizens home and I saw how many "caring" children treated their parents. One woman had a daughter who deemed her monthly visit (for a whole hour!) enough. That theory of kids taking care of one in their old age didn't and doesn't hold much credibility with me after that experience.