Options exist to start family, with or without him

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/09/2020 (1866 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts:  I just found out my boyfriend doesn’t want to have kids. I’m devastated!

I’m at the point in my life where I really don’t think I can find someone else and have kids in time for the best chances of them being healthy.

I’m in my early 40s, and when we started dating at 38 and 39, he told me he “loved kids,” and thought they were great. I guess I didn’t clarify if he actually wanted his own kids.

Now, he’s saying he never told me he wanted to have kids and that I am being unfair. Well, guess what? I’m heartbroken!

We haven’t had sex in over a month, and things are not fun around our house now. Should I leave? — Torn Between Him and a Baby, River Heights

Dear Torn: If you allowed this man to deprive you of having a baby in order to stay with him, that’s too steep a price for most baby- and child-loving women to pay!

The resentment would just build and the chasm would widen between the two of you. Be aware that deep, negative feelings like “You deprived me of having a child!” can be a big passion killer.

Is your guy thinking he’s about to get tricked into a pregnancy and that’s what accounts for the cold bedroom lately?

It may be you’ll have to leave this guy and see about single-parent conception or single-parent adoption of a young child, where you could keep on working.

Do you have any money saved for this project? Are your parents or siblings up for helping?

This guy may come around, once you leave him or later when he sees you with a child and realizes he still loves you and actually wants the child, too. But maybe you won’t want to see his face again after spending the pregnancy without him!

There are many ways to work out this problem. Your present boyfriend is not the only way.

 

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: My older brother is gay, and when he first came out, our mom acted like it was the greatest thing ever “because now they could check out guys together.” Yech.

While I’m definitely happy for my brother, I can tell he’s super-annoyed with mom, who’s constantly acting like “one of the gay guys” around him, commenting how different guys look.

He’d prefer her to just be a normal mom, and not his buddy. I tried to talk to her, but, I’m only 17, so she treated me like I didn’t know anything.

My brother is 21, and he had the same experience trying to tell her to back off. Help us, please. — Just Too Much, St. Vital

Dear Too Much: Why is mom doing this? That’s the question you need to get her to answer, if she can. Maybe she’s scared of losing him, now he’s out of the closet and moving forward with his life.

Although she tries to be on his wavelength, maybe she feels him drifting away. He needs to reassure her that she can act like a normal mom again and she won’t lose him.

Your job could be to urge him to do just that — pat down her feathers and reassure her he’ll stay her son.

 

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: My wife and I have been married for a long time and the sex has dwindled. We still love each other and all, but it feels very roommate-like. I’m in my mid 50s and she’s in her early 40s.

But that all changed recently, when we got a new bachelor next door, painting his house. It’s like she has a B-12 shot every time he’s outside.

She saves desserts for him because he told her he has a “monster sweet tooth.“ (“Isn’t that cute?” she says. Let me throw up here.)

She is always at the damn fence, chatting! I could hear them from the kitchen window on a recent Saturday, and she was flirting with him like nobody’s business, in a bikini top and short shorts.

Have I lost the race? Is she going to sleep with him? Does she want to sleep with him? What am I to her now?

I don’t know what to do, but I haven’t slept much lately, because it’s all I can think about. I don’t even know how to confront her about it. Please help. — Feeling Betrayed and Defeated, St. Boniface

Dear Feeling Betrayed and Defeated: Here’s a casual line you need to deliver when you and your wife are busy doing something else. “So, tell me all about the guy next door. What have you learned about our new neighbour?”

That will get a lot more out of her than showing your jealousy. Let her innocently babble away and see what you can learn. Whatever things she really likes about him may be the same things you showed her in the beginning — and then slacked off from.

Sexual attraction is so much more than just hormones and good looks. It’s interest and excitement in all kinds of things — music, conversation shared activities, people, fun. You need the right atmosphere to want to get it on.

I had a middle-aged couple tell me the house went dead quiet when the kids moved out. They said it wasn’t until they got a pair of dogs in order to breed a certain kind of puppies, that their own sex life revved back up again.

Nothing like playful, randy doggies to remind you what you’re missing!

 

Please send your questions and comments to lovecoach@hotmail.com or Miss Lonelyhearts c/o the Winnipeg Free Press, 1355 Mountain Ave., Winnipeg, MB, R2X 3B6.