Hi, 42M in the Midwest U.S. with my husband (32M). Together 5 years and married almost 2.
We were the couple who literally looked at adoptable kids online during our first date. Since becoming a couple we’ve focused all our time and resources creating a life together where we could provide a home for the child(ren) we knew we wanted. All of it I paid for because my husband needed to finish school to start a career.
Fast forward and today we’re married, share a last name, a home in a nice neighborhood with good schools in a city and state we feel safe as gay dads raising kids. My husband finished school so we both have a masters and are working in our fields. A dog and two cats. All ready for baby, but…
He while open to adoption wants to have a biologically related child. To the point he’d trust a stranger from the internet in another state to use a turkey baster and hope it all works out. And I’m being too negative worried about worst case scenarios when I say whoa wait.
We’re in couples and individual counseling. There are no yelling matches or big arguments, and counseling has helped us understand and communicate so much. But now I find myself realizing it’s so important to him that if I don’t agree to a path getting him a biological child our life together will be done.
I lost everything to an abusive first husband to get away from that situation, started life entirely over in my mid-30s, and somehow managed to get where I am. But there was a huge cost to that not just financially. I took risks and leveraged everything and maintained super high stress levels and im worn down. I’m just starting to feel a sense of security with keeping where we’ve gotten to, but I have nothing left that would put a dent in the cost of Surogacy done with the right protections in place.
I can respect the Man I love has a deep need even if I don’t understand or agree with it. I do too, the need to feel a sense of security in life and our marriage. I want to tell him I’m willing to go down the surrogacy path as long as we do it right and save to pay for it or most of it first. I feel like that’s fair to say we can meet both our needs by taking more time. But we can’t ignore I’d be at least 45 before a pregnancy was possible to try for and it could be years after that. Still no guarantee. And the world is a little - bat shit crazy? - right now.
I feel like agreeing to something so big and expensive and complex without any contingency plan is a delayed ultimatum. It says no matter what happens in life we must find a way to a biological child or it’s over. I found foster to adopt programs in my state we could start down now and it’s the way I always felt in my heart id become a parent. I want to tell him I’ll go down the surrogacy path when we can afford it and will do everything we can to get there, but that I want to agree at the start to a cutoff point like 3 years from now if life hasn’t led us to a place we can do it then we adopt instead.
I feel like this is reasonable but I’m worried taking that stand could lead to him saying we have an irreconcilable difference and leaving me. So I’ll have spent another decade of my life with someone, not abusive quite the opposite I love him to pieces and I know he loves me, but giving everything I had to give in every way and ending up alone again because I couldn’t make this baby happen this way. I’m not sure if I’m asking anything or making sense, I just feel sad. I feel sad because everything I never dared to hope for came true in my life after so many hard years, and this could be the end of it all. Not just my marriage but also being a parent, which felt like such a certainty and I framed my whole life around. Just me and the dog in a house in the suburbs. Is there any hope we can navigate through this? Isn’t that for better or for worse or am I asking too much? Thanks for listening.