You have a lot of work to do on achieving contentment in your own life before you’re ready for a committed relationship, let alone bringing another human being into the world, says Mariella Frostrup
The dilemma My girlfriend of 18 months has said no to having another child. She’s 44, I’m 38 and she’s my first serious relationship. I’m completely broken; she has known from the start I’ve wanted one. She already has a six-year-old daughter from an abusive, cheating ex, who got her pregnant after six weeks together and left her just after their daughter was born. Her main reason seems to be medical complications from her first pregnancy. I haven’t really bonded much with her daughter – she adores her mum – but that’s probably her age. I feel unfulfilled in life, have an average social life and job so bringing up someone’s else’s child isn’t the same. I fear being alone again without the support she has given me – more than my own family would. I was thinking of surrogacy as a desperate last resort but that seems weird, and may only be viable if she didn’t have a daughter already.
Mariella replies First things first. This is the sort of non-negotiable detail that I wish budding couples would attempt to settle, or at the very least establish ground rules on, at the outset. There’s no other partnership we’d enter into without defining terms and the person we’re attempting to spend our lives with seems the most serious of any such prospective union. I appreciate that falling in love isn’t a rational matter but despite the rush of hormones to the head there are certain stumbling blocks that even blind love won’t overcome. Whether or not to have children would certainly seem to fall into that category. Perhaps your girlfriend failed to articulate her reluctance to have another child, or perhaps like so many others you didn’t stop to listen, or presumed time would shape your future together in your favour.
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