Girlfriend can't have children

[Solvinden]

Hey everyone,

I have an extremely pressing question. My girlfriend can't have children and a few days ago I told her that I can not live with that; that it is extremely important for me to have biological children. So I kind of broke up. But, apart from that, the relationship was perfect in every way whatsoever and I would be extremely happy to stay with her forever. After a discussion with a friend (and her opinion) I have commitment issues.

But it really is because of the having biological children part. It's stupid but somehow it feels important to me. Now I thought that maybe it is a solution that I just donate to a sperm bank. However, I read that most people do not get accepted. Is there a foolproof way to fulfil this wish that way?

And by the way I watched Leo's video on reproduction several times, but it did not answer the question for me. However, I feel that something about my thinking is just not right. Right now, I would feel very relieved and happy if I could not have children. So I'm suffering my possibilities. That's crazy! On the other hand, I really love children, but I do not need them to feel a particular way. My attachment comes from passing something of myself on. (Leo said that the genes water down over generations but also the number of people inheriting them increases.)

And the question is pressing because the more time passes, the bigger the chances are that it is too late to fix this, if I want to fix this.

Love,

Solvinden

[outlandish]

You have mixed feelings, and you're ultimately going to have to make up your own mind of course. Maybe you already have made up your mind with the actions you have taken. It will be hard to mend the injury with your GF if you decided to get back with her, there will always be this doubt in her mind that you're happy to be with her when she can't have biological children with you.

I don't think literally donating to the sperm bank would be very satisfying, but everyone's different. Yes, I think unless you're the stereotypical attractive successful male, you probably won't be an accepted donor. So that would leave more informal "sperm bank" options, which might not be very satisfying either.

Personally, I think having kids for the purpose of passing something of yourself on, is a bit narrow, but that's probably what motivates a lot of people to have kids in the first place. When you have kids, it's like this amazing situation where you have these amazing little love beings who you channel so much love into, in a way that's way beyond what you thought was possible. But all that is really hard to describe and imagine before you actually have kids, so there's not much point in trying to spoil the surprise.

For me, I wanted to have biological kids too, and I'm very happy to have them, but now that I do have them I totally understand how people can have the same experience with adopted kids. I even get how people can have it with other people's kids, nieces and nephews, or even broader categories of groups of children, or not even children, just helping people become better and grow, or even some kind of abstract project. It's different for everyone, and with each expanding circle of abstraction it's a little less obvious. Form me, having my own biological kids is the most obvious direct route to it, we're wired for it, but as humans we can transcend that and give in so many different ways.

If you do decide you're OK with not having kids and being back with her, you're going to have to thoroughly change and be able to show her your change of heart, which will take time if it's going to be genuine. So that means you shouldn't rush right now.

[JessiChell]

@Solvinden

Why is it important for you to have biological children? Or even children at all? What do you want to gain from having them? 

What feeling do you think they will give you vs adopting children? 

 

[Leo Gura]

10 hours ago, Solvinden said:

Right now, I would feel very relieved and happy if I could not have children. So I'm suffering my possibilities. That's crazy! On the other hand, I really love children, but I do not need them to feel a particular way. My attachment comes from passing something of myself on.

There's literally no need to pass anything down because you already are the entire Universe.

Your fantasy of "passing stuff down" is just that -- pure fantasy. You might as well have broken up with her because she couldn't shit out a unicorn.

If you want a kid with her, go adopt one.

My video on Reproduction addresses this very point.

[Preety_India]

 

It's good that you broke up with her. Move on and find a woman who can bear children and have a family with you. 

What I see in this relationship is a value mismatch. You want something fundamental that you can't get. This is not about hair color or her dressing style or an annoying habit or little things that you can easily compromise with in relationships. This is about kids. This is a big factor. 

If you marry her, the frustration will be balled up inside you like a time bomb and continue to drag the joy of the relationship leading to constant conflict and dissonance. It's not productive for you and neither healthy for her. 

So the best decision here is to break up and find someone with whom your major expectations match.. 

Some people want their own kids. They can't be happy with adopted kids. Although the wiring can be changed, there's no point in forcing oneself to do what the heart doesn't really want. 

Be with a woman who fulfills your major and basic needs. So you don't have to feel like you sacrificed something. This way you are happy and you're also able to keep your woman happy. So win win. 

No point in dragging relationships with regrets and unfulfilled expectations. 

 

[rlc]

22 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Your fantasy of "passing stuff down" is just that -- pure fantasy. You might as well have broken up with her because she couldn't shit out a unicorn.

LMFAOOO 

[tsuki]

12 hours ago, Solvinden said:

It's stupid but somehow it feels important to me.

If you feel that it's important to you, then it's not stupid. You are ridiculing your feelings.

It's perfectly fine to be unsure whether you want to have children or not. It is also fine to avoid committing to a partner that forces you to make this choice prematurely.

However, there are two points to consider:

1. The perfect partner does not exist. There ought to be incompatibilities, even huge ones. Still, love is a choice. Once you choose to love a person, it's very difficult to un-love her. Moving on to the next woman may leave you comparing her to the former one.
2. Making choices when you're under the influence of strong emotions is a bad idea. Even if you make the right choice, you may feel unsure afterwards for a very long time and second-guess yourself.

Let it cool off.

[The Don]

@Leo Gura - it's a great thing to discover the illusory nature of reality.

I don't deny that reality is an illusion and I'm certainly not against reality as being as it is; imaginary.

With that being said, there is a thing called nature, and nature doesn't give a fu*k about imagination, lifestyle, and wants.

Having children is paramount when it comes to stability and human progress. Even Elon Musk said that.

Here's what I found on Google, a powerful explanation for those who disregard the importance of having children.

[SOURCE] Oswald Spengler wrote the spectacular opus "The Decline of the West" shortly before WWI and the book was published in Germany in 1918, provoking universal reflections on man and civilization. The following passage is found on pages 104-105 in volume 2 of the 1961 Knopf edition:

When the ordinary thought of a highly cultivated people begins to regard "having children" as a question of pro's and con's, the great turning-point has come. For Nature knows nothing of pro and con. Everywhere, wherever life is actual, reigns an inward organic logic, an "it," a drive, that is utterly independent of waking-being, with its causal linkages, and indeed not even observed by it. The abundant proliferation of primitive peoples is a natural phenomenon, which is not even thought about, still less judged as to its utility or the reverse. When reasons have to be put forward at all in a question of life, life itself has become questionable. At that point begins prudent limitation of the number of births. In the Classical world the practice was deplored by Polybius as the ruin of Greece, and yet even at his date it had long been established in great cities; in subsequent Roman times it became appallingly general. At first, explained by the economic misery of the times, very soon it ceased to explain itself at all. And at that point, too, in Buddhist India as in Babylon, in Rome as in our own cities, a man's choice of the woman who is to be, not the mother of his children as amongst peasants and primitives, but his own "companion for life," becomes a problem of mentalities. The Ibsen marriage appears, the "higher spiritual affinity" in which both parties are "free"--free, that is, as intelligence, free from the plantlike urge of the blood to continue itself, and it becomes possible for a Shaw to say "that unless Woman repudiates her womanliness, her duty to her husband, to her children, to society, to the law, and to everyone but herself, she cannot emancipate herself." The primary woman, the peasant woman, is a mother. The whole vocation towards which she has yearned from childhood is included in that one word. But now emerges the Ibsen woman, the comrade, the heroine of a whole megalopolitan literature from Northern drama to Parisian novel. Instead of children, she has soul-conflicts; marriage is a craft-art for the achievement of "mutual understanding". It is all the same whether the case against children is the American lady's who would not miss a season for anything or the Parisienne's who fears that her lover would leave her, or an Ibsen heroine's who "belongs to herself"--they all belong to themselves and they are all unfruitful. The same fact, in conjunction with the same arguments, is to be found in the Alexandrian, in the Roman, and, as a matter of course, in every other civilized society--and conspicuously in that in which Buddha grew up. And in Hellenism and in the nineteenth century, as in the times of Lao-Tzu and the Charvaka doctrine, there is an ethic for childless intelligence and literature about the inner conflicts of Nora and Nana. The "quiverful," which was still an honorable enough spectacle in the days of Werther, becomes something rather provincial. The father of many children is for the great city a subject for caricature; Ibsen did not fail to note it and presented it in his Love's Comedy.

At this level all Civilizations enter upon a stage, which lasts for centuries, of appalling depopulation. The whole pyramid of cultural man vanishes. It crumbles from the summit, first the world-cities, then the provincial forms, and finally the land itself, whose best blood has incontinently poured into the towns, merely to bolster them up awhile. At the last, only the primitive blood remains, alive, but robbed of its strongest and most promising elements. This residue is the Fellah type.

Edited May 27, 2020 by The Don

[Girzo]

@The Don Have you wondered why books from the previous century look so great to you? Maybe someone's opinions are lagging behind the current political and cultural landscape.

People are not wanting to have kids in western countries, because there's enough population there. It's all about maintaining a flow, how many people are out, how many people are in. So if our life expectancy is rising we don't need more kids, because we live longer. Not everyone has to have kids.

Paradoxically, in America people who are for having more kids are also against social support that would enable more people to afford having those kids. Poland seems like a sane country in comparison, because the right-wing party rulling there is redistributing the income to parents by giving them monthly benefits worth around 1/4 of minimal wage per kid.

Also, maybe a good point of balance for the country would be at a lower level of population, maybe we have too much people right now, making unnecessary burden on the environment and the economy. The guy you have cited had no idea how the world would look like in the XXI century.

A few hundreds of years of selection by talented people going to live in cities won't undo a few hundred thousand years of eveolution. Assuming there really is any difference. I think that 99% percent of people doing better in the citites is caused by infrastructure and more oppurtunity given to them.

Calling people living on farms primitive is insulting.

 

[JosephKnecht]

You are constructing your identity on the level of your body. You believe that you are your body, and you want to pass the genes/memes onto your children.

There is nothing wrong with that. Accept the decision that you have made based on your current level of awareness. You did the best with what you knew.

Going forward, acknowledge that it is possible to increase your awareness and construct your identity on a higher level.

It is possible to see the children of your neighbors as your children. It is possible to see all children in your country as your children. It is possible to see all children as your own children.

It all depends on how you construct your sense of identity. It all depends on who you think You are.

 

[healthie]

@Solvinden man you have your own course of life, do what you intuit is best. It's all about what you would like to manifest. If you want to have biological children with a life partner then she isn't the one even though you have a good connection. If it's just about making a kid with your semen, and you want to preserve the relationship, and you have plenty of time, maybe you can find a surrogate mother or something thats similar. If you're in the US for sure you'll find a solution. Hope everything turns out okay for you

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, The Don said:

Having children is paramount when it comes to stability and human progress.

How about helping raise an adopted child to be a healthy and loved adult? That's not paramount? You want that child to become a mass shooter?

Notice how utterly selfish your position is. The reason you feel it's important to have kids is because it's all wrapped up with your ego. Self-bias 101, survival 101. You are just acting out a survival script like an animal.

[The Don]

34 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

The reason you feel it's important to have kids is because it's all wrapped up with your ego.

The reason I feel and believe it's important to have kids is that my transcended ego wants the best for the common good.

We're having families not for the sake of ourselves, but to maintain a healthy and prosperous society.

In my case, for example, I won't have kids because I feel like it or because I truly wish to have them, but because I know I'm doing a great thing for our society. A kid has to be raised in a responsible manner, not with the intent of making him how you want him to be. A kid needs healthy attachment from his parent, not a harsh disciplinary action.

When a kid gets the attention and the love he needs, he won't become a mass shooter.

@Leo Gura, I've never been against adoption. I agree with you and I believe, for sure, it's paramount to adopt a kid. It's a good thing to adopt a kid. Many people do that. There are people who can not have kids. There are many children in need of adoption. It's a perfect combination.

But for those who can have kids, why not have them?

People used to have kids. Now we no longer have them. That's not good. Our society is far below replacement levels. The outcome? Catastrophic.

Wait and see.

Edited May 27, 2020 by The Don

[The observer]

17 hours ago, Solvinden said:

It's stupid but somehow it feels important to me.

I wouldn't want to pass that down. Make my children suffer from such problems? No, thanks. The world already has enough suffering.

[Extreme Z7]

1 hour ago, The Don said:

But for those who can have kids, why not have them?

People used to have kids. Now we no longer have them. That's not good. Our society is far below replacement levels. The outcome? Catastrophic.

Wait and see.

Chill, man. The world is fine. Focus on your own issues.

[The observer]

@Keyhole

[rlc]

3 hours ago, The Don said:

When a kid gets the attention and the love he needs, he won't become a mass shooter.

It goes way deeper than that. Mass shootings aren’t bad parenting. For a child to become a mass shooter is an extremely rare and unique case. 

4 hours ago, The Don said:

People used to have kids. Now we no longer have them. That's not good. Our society is far below replacement levels. The outcome? Catastrophic.

Wait and see.

For who? ? This is so far from a transcended ego. 

[JessiChell]

4 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

How about helping raise an adopted child to be a healthy and loved adult? That's not paramount? You want that child to become a mass shooter?

Notice how utterly selfish your position is. The reason you feel it's important to have kids is because it's all wrapped up with your ego. Self-bias 101, survival 101. You are just acting out a survival script like an animal.

@Solvinden  This statement is absolute truth. 

The desires to birth children always stem from selfishness. 

Having said that, I cannot imagine leaving someone I was truly happy with over their inability to reproduce (something they have zero control over.) How utterly heartbreaking. 

But I hope you find yourself and find happiness. 

Also, I hope she finds happiness. 

Edited May 27, 2020 by JessiChell

[The Don]

4 hours ago, Cykaaaa said:

@The Don Why do you care so much about western civilization?

Because Western civilization is fading away. We are losing it.

[Arcangelo]

Kids are way too fucking expensive. Are you really sure you want to have one?