I’d like to take a moment to sincerely thank the Harpies, charming and vicious they are, for extending me the opportunity to blog on their site. Apparently I’m the first man to blog for Harpyness, and I don’t take that position lightly. Thanks, Harpyness readers, for allowing me into your midst. So let me start from the beginning.
I am a man in my early 30’s currently going through a divorce. Thankfully it is not painful in the traditional sense. My ex and I are on good terms, speak regularly, and hope to maintain a true friendship when all is said and done. The pain has stemmed from the loss of my partner and best friend of nearly ten years, while figuring out how to regroup and continue on with my life. Recently I’ve dived back into the dating pool with mixed success (and some groan-inducing moments). Dating is stressful enough as it is, more so when you last seriously dated during the first Bush administration.
During the course of our separation, I confided in friends and family members about the emotions I was experiencing. I spent countless hours reading about divorce from those who had experienced it and emerged to find a brighter day. I ached for stories of people, like me, who had been divorced at a relatively young age, only to eventually meet their soulmates. I went through a phase where I hooked up with nearly as many women in three months than I had in my first thirty years. Partly because my ex and I stopped being intimate long ago, partly out of of loneliness, partly because I missed feeling a warm body next to mine at night. I am neither proud nor ashamed of this. However there was one issue which confused, frustrated, and surprised me.
One of the largest issues that led to our breakup was that of family. Bottom line, I was ready and eager to start one. My ex was not. This is not a fault of hers. Not everybody wants to have children, as is the right and choice of the individual. Yet we had discussed, as our relationship grew more serious and led to marriage, our mutual desire to eventually start a family together. As time passed, ‘eventually’ felt like it was moving farther and father away. Finally she admitted that she was not ready to start a family, and could not say for certain that she would ever be. Needless to say there were other issues that came between us, and I had shortcomings as a husband that I deeply regret. But hearing that we would likely not have a family together, to me, was the equivalent of dropping a relationship atomic bomb.
Having a family and being a father is a lifelong dream for me. I ache for the day where I can play catch with my son, or push my daughter on a swing. I long to watch my children grow older, to experience life with them, to help them learn from my mistakes. I want birthday parties and playdates. Prom and college. Yet when I told others about my sadness of fatherhood being put on hold indefinitely, their reaction was, unanimously, “Oh, don’t worry. You have plenty of time.”
I understand the rationale for this sentiment, from a technical standpoint. Men biologically are able to conceive for quite some time. It is far more common for men to become fathers in their forties and fifties than it is for women to become pregnant at a similar age. However, these responses felt stunningly hollow. Insulting in many ways. Just because I’m ‘able’ to have children for a long time does not replace the pain that came with realizing my dreams been put on hold, and that they would not be realized with the person with whom always thought they would.
We are bombarded by articles, tv shows and advertisements geared towards women who either want to start a family, or have one already. The only ads that seem to really target the younger male demographic are those insultingly misogynistic beer commercials where illiterate cavemen choose alcohol over women. My life goals have been dented. Not destroyed, hopefully, but certainly damaged in a way that will take time to heal. I found it surprising that my close friends and family felt they could comfort me by essentially letting me know that I could produce sperm for the foreseeable future. I do believe those reactions are a reflection on how society has pigeonholed what they see as the individual desires of men and women, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers. I do not believe my desires are uncommon. But it saddened me that people reacted as though my concerns were merely that of biology.
Not all of our dreams are tied to how our bodies function. Many of mine were emotional, spiritual, and one of the biggest ones was dealt a severe blow that I am still recovering from. That those closest to me did not or could not understand that the biggest pain was in my heart, not my groin, is one of the saddest byproducts of this situation. Life moves on. I will hopefully find the person with whom I’m meant to experience that joy. But for now, the heart wants what the heart wants. And my heart, to its chagrin, has been told to wait.
First of all, thanks so much for guest-authoring a post! Always lovely to have divergent voices around here.
…it saddened me that people reacted as though my concerns were merely that of biology.
I grew up in a very family-centric / kid-centric culture. Which isn’t to say I didn’t know couples or single adults who had chosen or could not have families. I had plenty of mentors in my life who modeled a happy, connected version of being “grown up” that didn’t involve parenting. Since then, I’ve moved to an East Coast city where I feel like the culture of parenting and non-parenting is way more divisive and fraught. As a person who probably will not ever parent, I am surrounded by young adults who’ve made that choice for themselves because they actively don’t want to be involved in family life. It’s hard for me to find language to express the sadness I feel about not being in a more family-oriented culture (families of ALL kinds!) without getting dragged into this either/or antagonism.
This comment isn’t coming out very coherently. The point is, I think our culture doesn’t offer us very many tools to express our longings for connection, for family, for inter-generational relationships (including parent-child relationships) EXCEPT if we’re willing to use language that reinforces the neotraditional view of marriage and family. In your case, the fallout is that people aren’t able to see your sadness as anything other than sadness at the delay at passing on your genes … rather than a more comprehensive sadness about having to delay the sort of life you image yourself sharing with those closest to you.
Divorces are a kind of death and the pain is often for the loss of dreams and plans made with the spouse. As sad as it is to be divorcing, it would be infinitely more painful if you had children experiencing your separation and divorce at the same time, so there is that to consider.
As a newly single person, maybe you can channel some of that love and yearning for a child into significant volunteering for a child or children. It is not meant to be a replacement for the family you want, but sometimes helping others can take you to a new place of understanding.
I realize you are not asking for any advice in this post, and that sometimes people need to just feel their feelings before they are ready to move on. All you can really control in this situation is your own emotions and actions/reactions, and what you do/don’t do differently in life is a choice only you can make.
“I spent countless hours reading about divorce from those who had experienced it and emerged to find a brighter day. I ached for stories of people, like me, who had been divorced at a relatively young age, only to eventually meet their soulmates.”
If you’re still finding comfort in these stories, you can add mine to your collection. I divorced at 26, after 7 years of marriage. We also divorced for family reasons (in part); our son had died and it became too painful to remain together. I thought I had lost my chance at that true-love connection, thinking no one would ever live up to the happiness we had shared for so many years.
At 29, I met and married a man that surpassed my first husband in every way. I have found my true soulmate now, and we have a lovely little blended family. I had a child on my own out of wedlock, and he had a child from a previous relationship as well, and they are only a year apart.
Like you, I felt like I lost so much when I lost my marriage. All the plans and the visions of my future had included my husband, and when he suddenly wasn’t there, I felt like my entire future vanished. I dated, but even when single there was never the same feeling of years to look forward to. I wasn’t able to make plans more than a few months in advance. When I fell in love with my current husband, I told him honestly that he gave me my future back.
This raises a really interesting point about how society has such narrow views.
At wider family events, my brother and I are treated very differently and I am constantly asked when I plan to settle down and have kids while he gets the ‘man about town’ banter. Yet, I couldn’t care less about a partner or kids even at the age of 32 while my 36 year old brother is incredibly broody and yearns to be a husband and father, planning ahead for it financially and personally.
It irritates me hugely that his legitimate desires are seen as unimportant and arbitrary (I’m also not wild about about the ovary chat with me) and I wish we could move on from these ridiculously set expectations and ambitions for each gender.
Best of luck in the future!
I think something that gets erased by the whole ‘you’re a man, you can have kids whenever you want’ narrative is that there is more to fatherhood (and parenting) then the conception/birth. If part of the vision you have for your life is having lots of time to play with not only your kids but your grandkids, then having kids a bit earlier takes on more importance. If you want to not be retiring and paying for college at the same time, then again, when you have your kids takes on more importance.
There’s no perfect time to have kids, but there are trade-offs related to timing and each person has to decide what they’re willing to trade for their vision of a ‘perfect family’. It sucks when outside forces make your decision for you though and it can definitely mess up a marriage if both partners don’t agree.
Mr NB, I am sorry for your sadness and pain. Even an amicable divorce is a cause for grief, and I hope you will come to a place of healing soon.
I agree with everyone above, and I want to add that part of the way people are responding to you isn’t unique to your situation but is an example of how poorly we as a society deal with grief generally. Often times, people are uncomfortable with others’ pain, and so they say things that are unintentionally cruel. Saying “It’s better this way” to a mourner or someone who has lost a job or suffered some other catastrophic loss just makes the pain worse. It may or may not be true, but it’s really not what we want or need to hear right then. The same is true with the hurtful things people have said to you.
Your feelings of loss are perfectly legitimate, and I respect your ability to explain them without blaming your ex. May your wishes come true!
PS @AmandaS: Please accept my sympathy for the loss of your son. That sorrow never goes away, even if happier times come later.
Generally, our society holds the bar really, really low for fathers. They’re not expected to have a high level of emotional investment and/or involvement in the day-to-day activities of parenting like mother are. And the dominant narrative in our culture is that having a child and being a mother are essential aspects of every woman’s identity. By contrast, children are associated with manhood more in terms of proving one’s virility, which is a very biologically-oriented connection (my swimmers swim, and they’re effective, end of story). All of these factors lead to people not expecting men to yearn emotionally for parenthood, and they’re all largely factors that are symptomatic of a patriarchal culture. I hope you at least feel that you can confront people who have these ideas, and perhaps in doing so you can help change these overly restrictive and gender-based notions of parenthood that hurt both women and men. I also hope you find the right partner to share a family with someday.
Wow, your story illustrates both the lack of guidelines for comforting those who are grieving AND some really pathetic views about expected levels of involvement for fathers. Thank you very much for sharing, and more generally for articulating your desire for family and fatherhood so candidly.
I have a brother, younger by three years, and he has always wanted to be a husband and father. His personal story sounds like a lot of “lost” boys who get in trouble because they are aimless and have no sense of the future. But in his case (and who knows how many others), he had a strong desire, a serious aim. But his desires and aims were not acknowledged or were denigrated.
Had he been female, he probably would have gone to college and gotten the infamous MRS degree. And been completely, unutterably happy, though working at catch-as-catch-can jobs.
My brother was treated as “aimless” for caring little about how he earned a living. I was constantly told to consider childbearing in my plans for the future; he was constantly told to ignore the family in favor of the career. It was as though family is something that just happens to guys while they’re pursuing their real lives.
It took him a long time to become the person who could release those expectations. He’s proud to work and help support his family, but the work is secondary to his happiness and pride in his wonderful wife and son.
You don’t speak about your career focus and I’m not trying to say you’re exactly like my brother. But you’re certainly not the only man with a strong desire for family. Sometimes it helps to know that, eh?