Disclaimer: Just want to let this out and scream into the void. I am absolutely NOT looking for any advice, solutions, or relationship counseling on this matter. Please do not tell me to go for IVF screening, adoption, or marriage therapy. I just need to type this out because the weight in my chest is too heavy right now.
Before we got married, we did the responsible thing. We sat down and had the “kids conversation.” He made it 100% clear from day one that he was childfree and didn’t want any. I, on the other hand, genuinely felt the same way at the time. I didn’t want kids either, though back then, my mindset was more of a casual “eh, I wouldn’t mind if it happened, but I’m perfectly happy without.” So, we were aligned. We got married, built our life together, and everything was great.
Fast forward a few years into our marriage. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s turning a certain age, maybe it’s seeing my peers, or maybe it’s just some biological switch that flipped inside me out of nowhere—but I suddenly started yearning, deeply and painfully, to have at least one child. It became a constant ache.
A few days ago, I finally gathered the courage to bring it up to him properly.
When I told him, the look on his face wasn’t just resistance—he looked genuinely terrified. He visibly paled and immediately reiterated that he still absolutely does not want any children.
The thing is, throughout our years together, he never really gave me a deep, concrete reason why. Whenever the topic brushed past us in the past, he would throw out the typical, standard Singaporean answers: “not financially ready yet,” “the world’s economy is bad,” “cost of living in SG is too high,” “the education system is too stressful.” But the reality is, we are more than okay. We are dual-income, financially stable, and in most situations, we could easily afford and work out the logistics of raising a child here. The financial excuses just didn’t add up.
After a long, emotional conversation where I just asked him to be honest with me, he finally broke down and revealed his true, deeply buried reasons.
He told me about his childhood. I already knew he grew up in a quiet household and that his family had all passed away years ago, but he had omitted a massive, painful piece of the puzzle.
He grew up with three siblings, and all three of them were special needs individuals. Because his parents were always drowning in work to afford medical bills and basic survival, my husband became their primary caretaker from a very young age. He loved his siblings fiercely, but he was also completely, utterly exhausted. For the most part of his childhood, teenage years, and early 20s, he never actually had a life of his own. While his classmates were going out, playing sports, or hanging out after school, his entire existence was tied to caretaking duties.
His siblings and parents are no longer around. Years ago, his parents were driving his siblings somewhere, and they met with a fatal accident. My husband wasn’t in the car at the time. Overnight, he went from having a massive caretaking responsibility to having absolutely no immediate family left. He had told me about the accident before we got married, but he had never told me the part about his siblings being born with severe special needs.
Then he told me his deepest, darkest fear. He has noticed that on both his mother’s and his father’s side of the family, across extended relatives, there are multiple individuals born with special needs. He is terrified that it is deeply embedded in his genetics. His ultimate nightmare is that if we have a child, the child will be born with severe special needs, and he will be trapped in that relentless, exhausting cycle of caretaking all over again.
He looked at me and said it’s not my fault at all. He said that as much as he loved his late siblings, it was a traumatic, draining way to grow up, and he missed out on so much of what makes life worth living. Now that he finally has independence, he just yearns to live a normal, quiet life like everyone else.
Hearing him say all this… I find his reasons to be incredibly valid. My heart completely bleeds for the little boy he used to be, carrying a weight no child should ever have to carry.
But.. now there’s me. The biological clock is ticking, and I really, truly want a child. Yet, I look at him, and I know I cannot be that selfish. I cannot force a man who has already sacrificed his entire youth to caretaking to gamble his peace of mind on a “what if.”
During the talk, he started crying—I’ve rarely seen him cry—and he kept apologizing to me for his genes. He said he really, truly cannot risk it. He even told me that if having a child is a dealbreaker for me, and if I want to leave him to find someone else to have a family with, he will completely understand and respect my decision. He loves me enough to let me go.
But I love him too much. I know down to my bones that I won’t leave him. He is my home.
But realizing that also means realizing that I will never change his mind about having kids, and I shouldn’t even try to. I am going to respect his wishes. But sitting here tonight, knowing that the dream of holding my own baby is officially dead… it just hurts. It hurts so badly.