A couple of years ago, when I was giving serious consideration to actually leaving my marriage, I spent a lot of time thinking about the pros and cons. One of the biggest things was the subject of children. I had three kids from a previous marriage, and I knew that the current wife wanted to have kids.
I was getting older, and the thought of having another kid at my age was not appealing at all. I knew that if I were to have another child, it would be graduating high school about the time I was wanting to retire. There were a lot of things that I wanted to do in life, mostly traveling, and felt that having another kid would put a damper on that.
Christmas of last year, I had gone home to see my family. My sister had a little girl a couple of years ago, and this was my first real opportunity to interact with her. The thing that I remember most about that trip is my little niece sitting on a chair across the room from me and babbling on in her own language. I started talking nonsense words back to her, which caused her no end of amusement, and I wound up teaching her how to do the YMCA dance. After several iterations, I realized that the entire family was standing behind me, watching. After I left, I thought “That was fun.”
A few months later, my oldest son came to visit for a week. I took him to DC and The Statue of Liberty. While we were sight seeing, I realized that I was feeling the same sense of joy showing him around and sharing the experience with him that I had always wanted to share with a spouse. I started to realize that maybe, just maybe, it was possible to have my dream of seeing the world, and sharing it not only with a spouse, but with kids, and it would be just as special. Maybe more so. I started wondering if perhaps having kids wouldn’t be a damper on the seeing the world experience, but possibly make it better. I started thinking about other people I knew that had kids, and still were able to travel and see the world. I thought about how I was envious of their kids for being able to broaden their horizons, while I never had been able to. I finally realized that it was a bit selfish of me to think sharing these things with my kids would be a detriment to my own enjoyment.
The last thing that took me by surprise happened just before the Memorial Day weekend. We were having a barbecue at work, and one of the girls at work brought her 5 month old little girl. Of course, all the women were passing this poor child around like a bong at a frat party. Once again, as has happened so many times, this little girl caught sight of me and just kept looking and smiling. Her mother was amazed at how much attention was being paid to me by her daughter. As I sat there, watching my co-workers play baby baby who’s got the baby, I suddenly realized, to my amazement, that I wanted a turn holding her.
It kind of freaked me out.
I have technically been out of my marriage for a year. It was almost a year ago that I left on the five week assignment, after which I left my wife. Except for the two weeks when I was back, telling her I was leaving and packing everything up, I have essentially been separated almost a year. It has been long enough that I have been thinking about the possibilities of getting into a relationship again. One of the things that had been bothering me was that the likelihood of finding someone who didn’t already have kids, and who never wanted kids, was very very slim. So I had to take a look at how I felt about getting involved with someone who already had kids, and if they didn’t, how I felt about the fact that if they didn’t have kids, they probably would.
Mulling this over in my mind, I realized something. It wasn’t the kids that I didn’t necessarily want, it was child support. Child support, more than anything, has been that thing that has kept me from doing many of the things that I wanted to do. I simply didn’t have the money. I realized that it wasn’t that I didn’t want kids , it was that I didn’t want kids with the X2B. I knew how that would turn out. I knew that she did not have the capacity to be a good mother. I also knew that there was a really good chance that we wouldn’t last, and I didn’t want to start paying child support all over again. I also realized that, because of the failure of my first marriage, I have never had a chance to raise a child of my own. My oldest was six when we split, the youngest was under two. My ex and her new husband raised my kids. It has caused a lot of problems in my head. Every time they screw up, I blame myself since I wasn’t able to be there for them. If they do good, I am unable to take any credit for it since I really didn’t have a big part of their upbringing. The best I could say is that I was the “cool dad.” I was the one that could relate to them better. I kind of had that grandparents attitude of “love them, spoil them rotten, then send ‘em home.”
So, here I sit, getting ready to see a lawyer in a week or two to get the divorce papers ready for filing as soon as I legally can. When the judge signs, I will finally feel like I can get involved again, and I have doubts about my decision to not bring any more kids into this world. Right now, it kind of feels like I would not be opposed to the idea, as long as I felt there was a reasonable certainty that I would be able to raise them, and not just pay for someone else to do it.
Of course, this whole thing is rather academic. You cant be thinking about having kids if you cant find anyone willing to have sex with you.