Baby Or Not?

Starting a family – or not – is a decision every couple has to make together. But when your other half has a change of heart, does that necessarily spell the end of your marriage? Sasha Gonzales helps you weigh your options.

- Sasha Gonzales

It was a revelation that brought Tricia’s* world crashing down. One night, two years into her marriage, her husband, Roy*, broke the news to her: He had changed his mind about having kids. “We’d long talked about starting a family, but when I raised the issue, he told me he no longer felt like he wanted to bring a child into this world.”

“I was shocked and crushed,” shares the 35-year-old finance executive. “Being parents was our dream, or so I thought, so when he mentioned that he’d been trying to find a way to tell me that he couldn’t deal with the possibility of raising a child, it shook me to the core.”

After getting over her initial shock, Tricia felt a fury like she had never felt before; she didn’t speak to Roy for weeks. He then told her he wasn’t likely to change his mind and he’d understand if she wanted to call it quits; he felt like he’d let her down and didn’t want her to forgo being a mum because of him.

“There was just no way it would’ve worked between us. I would’ve spent the rest of my life resenting him,” says Tricia, who divorced Roy a few months later. “It was a difficult separation, but I didn’t want to stay married to a man who didn’t want to start a family with me.”

Irreconcilable differences?

“Starting a family is what many couples dream about and hope for,” says Ho Shee Wai, psychologist and director at The Counselling Place. “So when that dream is crushed, it’s only natural for the partner who wants kids to feel devastated and betrayed. That sense of betrayal will be especially strong if both parties had previously agreed to have kids.”