So ladies, I have an update to my Friday post about my friend and her possibly assweaselly suitor .
As you may recall, my jogging buddy’s new love interest mentioned that he really wanted kids. Despite the fact that my friend is 40 and told him she wanted to adopt, he blithely told her he’d rather try for biological children because “doctors can really make miracles these days.” This drew my ire, and I pronounced him an assweasel for being so ignorant and cavalier about sentencing her to the invasive misery of fertility treatments while he just wanked into a cup. Many of you feminazi bonerkillers agreed with my assessment.
This morning’s jog with my friend left me feeling a little better. In a subsequent date, she revealed to the gentleman in question that she had already had fertility treatments, unsuccessfully, and reiterated that she did not rule out adoption. Fortunately, he immediately backpedalled and said, that yes, he’d be totally fine with adoption. Curiously, he also revealed that he and his ex-wife had tried for some time to conceive, with no success. They didn’t try fertility treatments and not long after that, his ex-wife decided she really didn’t want children after all, which precipitated the breakup of the marriage. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to the wannabe daddy that perhaps his ex-wife, when faced with fertility treatments or childlessness, opted for the latter. And tellingly, he never had his sperm tested, so, as my friend said, “maybe he was the infertile one and not her.” Yes, because fertility–or lack thereof–is exclusively a woman’s issue! Babeez are always our problem, amirite??
I’m willing to back off my original assertion that the dude is a total assweasel–or at least, he’s not a total assweasel on this issue (he may be an assweasel for all other kinds of reasons, which he might reveal if they continue to date). I do still think, however, that he sounds ignorant–and willfully so–about reproduction and what it means to start a family. For a middle-aged man who clearly wants a children, that’s just a shame, and it will be a real liability for him and whoever he winds up with.
Maybe he reads this site.
He doesn’t sound a bit willfully ignorant. Many guys who “really want kids” also take the time to do their research and understand all the fertility treatments/options available. Your friend certainly has a few red flags to keep in mind as she proceeds; for her sake, I hope this guy exceeds the Harpies’ expectations!
Oh, I have a friend whose husband is most anxious to start in vitro. She is much less enthused. I cannot imagine how any person can pressure another into such a painful, expensive, invasive procedure. If she doesn’t volunteer for it he needs to STFU, or, even if she does, she should set the timetable and he should butt the fuck out. We are not baby mills!
It’s good that he changed his position after talking with her, but his original comment could still be classified as insensitive and clueless. It’s unacceptable for a man who is truly interested in having children not to take responsibility for learning about his own health & potential infertility as well as getting a true understanding of how invasive female fertility procedures can be. I wish I could order all men a copy of the book The Male Biological Clock.
It sounds like Mr. Dude only backpedaled because your friend stood her ground and was able to tell him she had tried fertility treatments previously. I’d bet cash money dollars that if she did the former but not the latter, he’d still be pushing for her to have a biological child.
Yeah, these posts have not given me the best impression of Mr. Dude. I’ve noticed that in our culture, even intelligent men who pass as nice guys can have some old-fashioned ideas about marriage, parenting, and other people’s bodies as property, and they probably don’t even realize it at the time.
Oops, meant to say that he DOES sound willfully ignorant. Damn typos…
@Kivrin: Totally agree. If you feel strongly about something it is your personal responsibility to be educated about it and to understand your options. You can’t just assume that it will happen because you want it to, that’s not just ignorant, it’s naive.
I definitely remember reading an article a couple of weeks ago about how — shock! — sperm quality degrades with age as well as egg quality. Everyone acts like women are only safe to have kids up to age 35 and after that there are a ton of problems that only women face. But men age too and with aging comes cellular degradation, even in their precious swimmers. Anyway, I hope if your friend likes Mr. Dude then he continues to get his act together.
@baraqiel: Yeah, I covered that very phenomenon in a post a couple weeks ago: it turns out that the leading cause of several serious health problems, including autism and schizophrenia, is linked to paternal age instead of maternal age. Men’s assumption that their sperm has no shelf life is a total FAIL. Frankly, my friend has just as much right to say “you know, I don’t want to make babies with your possibly defective middle-aged jizz anyway.”
I have volunteered to educate Mr. Dude about all this, but my friend doesn’t think that would be a good idea. I can’t imagine why…
I can relate to the desire to reproduce naturally and came close to sympathizing with your friend’s Maybe Mr. Right. It took a debilitating chronic illness to put my dreams of parenthood into perspective, and I went through a mourning period after accepting the inevitability that biologically reproducing would never be a viable option for me. If I were a guy, I can imagine that my feelings might’ve translated into the sort of head-in-the-clouds delusional optimism of the man who honestly believes that where there’s a will there’s a way. However, now I’m seeing something much more insidious going on with your friend’s date. That it never occurred to him to have his sperm tested says something critical about his personality, I think. Instead of being optimistically deluded, I think it’s a possibility that this guy might actually (might) have narcissistic delusions about his role in affairs that don’t turn out as expected. Surely a doctor would’ve suggested having his sperm tested — that seems like standard medical procedure in a case like this. But that isn’t even necessary because any rational person of the male persuasion would have to acknowledge that the problem could very well lie with his equipment, not hers. I just don’t see how it could not occur to him. So that leaves as the most likely explanation that he refuses to acknowledge that he may be the infertile one, which, again, says something about him that I don’t think your friend should casually overlook. What does this say about his attitude towards life, relationships and responsibility? Would he be the kind of guy who, upon encountering marital problems, would refuse to take ownership of his role in creating the problems? Would he dump all the blame on his wife? If he’s a chronic blame-shifter, then he’s probably also the kind of guy who would use marital problems as justification for having an affair, because that type of person would perceive himself to be the long-suffering, put-upon partner who deserves to exact a little revenge. Eventually resentment will compel him to seek sympathy (and sex) from an outside source — it’s entirely consistent with this personality type, which falls somewhere on the narcissism continuum.
I could be wrong, of course, but I really do think the refusal to consider that the infertility issues may lie with him is a gigantic red flag. If I were your friend, I would intitiate a discussion (and very soon) about the conception difficulties with his ex-wife. She needs to know exactly what went down and how. The backpedaling on the adoption issue seems, at first glance, like a positive sign, but I think it’s important to also consider that he may be the type of guy who will say whatever he thinks a woman wants to hear.
Dating, sheesh. It’s almost more trouble than it’s worth! Best of luck to your friend.
@BeckySharper — I think this has a lot to do with some of the anti-aging stuff that Jez has posted about lately. Women are told, loudly and often, that aging is something we need to worry about, that it’ll make us less valuable and useful. By contrast, men are told that they improve with age: they gain income and status, options open up to them, and their gray hair is “distinguished”. So I don’t think it occurs to men that they have to worry about the bad effects of aging in the same way that women are told to worry about them all the time.
Of course, there’s also the fact that penises and related junk are supposedly invulnerable to every ill. Even ED isn’t a problem with your dick, it’s a mild obstacle to spontaneous intimacy.