“I can just have children with someone else”

“Wouldn’t it be crazy if we parted ways, I have children with someone else and then we get back together”

“Maybe it’s a good thing I’m with someone else now to have kids and we can be together in the future”.

I once dated “the Foreigner”. nice guy, a bit younger than me. Since I was in my single and reckless era, he was supposed to be a one-night stand but he stuck around for a while and told me he was ready for a family. He already had a child and as I was told, he and the mother were no longer together. When I asked him if he wanted more children, he said yes. Which I understood, he was in his late twenties. So when I told him I might not be able to have children, he decided it wouldn’t be a problem. He liked me for me. He would just have his children with someone else.

Straightening this out in my head, it felt like this: I cannot give you a child, so you get one from someone else. His reality might have been that he wanted to be with me but also wanted children, so the solution became having a child with another woman. But for the other woman: “Your partner cannot conceive, so you impregnate me. What does that make me?” The dynamic of this right here, made me feel really sad.

I know cases where relationships ended because one partner couldn’t have children and the other deeply wanted to. I know of another where one couldn’t conceive and the other simply had his way with someone else. And I’ve also seen couples stay and go through it together. There are many different outcomes when one of us is reproductively challenged. It depends on the person, on their values, on how they choose to carry disappointment. No situation is exactly the same.

When one is unfortunately reproductively challenged, it’s not just about you, not when you’re in a relationship. It’s natural to feel the need and desire to procreate. And it’s difficult not being able to. But it’s something else entirely to be able to, to want to, and to hear that your partner can’t. That reality reshapes everything.

Even though it hurt to deal with men who wanted to be with me, but procreate with someone else, I could understand the feeling. I did leave my partner at the time because I didn’t want to feel like less of a woman and I didn’t want him to remain childless because of me. I heard he has children now with someone else and that genuinely makes me happy. It feels like I made the right choice. Not for him, but for me. It doesn’t feel like it’s my fault. It doesn’t feel like someone else is carrying my burden for me.