u/ThrowRA-Gazelle71

I start:

At 11 years old I became the main game master of an internet play-by-forum game about wrestling. I've had a set of "cards" of imaginary wrestlers and had to arrange matches and stories between them. I've done it so well, in-detail and maturely that everybody thought that I am 20+ years old and the game had peak user engagement during my time. I've always tactically avoided any mic chat with these people as I still haven't got my voice change. Whenever I think of it I think it showcased my Ni+Te usage at a very young age in practice.

Hi guys, I won't be sharing my whole life story too much. I simply want to ask you how you actually navigate making big life decisions.

Personally I am stuck for some time with laid out options and what to do next. Each option is completely different from another, but would impact my life & lifestyle immensely and realistically dismiss all the others for a very long time. Each option yields its weight and I am not convinced to anything.

Would like to learn your stories on huge life decisions and techniques on how have you navigated them.

I am 27M, my wife 30F within a month, married for over a year after 8 years of relationship. We know each other since our teenage years, best friends etc.

We never really had our mind made up regarding children or had a specific life plan, we just wanted to be together. The problem is, as she approaches 30th birthday, there is a growing pressure on a subject of children.

To be fair, I somewhat put the pressure myself, as I know that the birth stuff becomes on average much more complicated after the woman hits 35 years old, and I don't think that we plan to take risks. Therefore I conclude that we should plan them within next 5 years period if we would ever plan to have them.

To be clear, it's not like any of us wants to have children as a principle. Fairly I didn't bother with it much before whether I'll have children with my wife or not, I just wanted to be with her. I would prefer to be childless with her rather than having children with other woman if anything had to happen. I think she thinks the same of me.

I think that you get our relationship dynamics at this point. That being said, I still think a lot of the subject of children recently. I came to the conclusion that the main driver of my doubts are finances.

To start with, we have a relatively good situation, but I provide for most of it. We have our modest place to live. I work in tech, she works as a teacher. My job earns 3x as much, but is stressful and the job market has been in a very poor situation for few years already. She has a stable, but lowly paid job. I genuinely fear any sort of layoffs, as in case of such we are left with her low income on which we could barely survive without touching our savings.

I think that teachers are severely underpaid in my country. That being said, to cut story short, my wife has realistically got no better prospects to improve her finances without a 180 degree life change. That means that if we would have children next 5 years, I would be the main breadwinner for a foreseeable future.

The main problem is that I am definitely not willing to commit to being the main breadwinner in this economy. Life would be hell to stressful for me. Any existential fear that I have would become overdriven. I don't want to work myself to the bone just to provide for family. I could have a child if I would feel that my wife would meaningfully contribute in case of any emergency, but that's not the case.

I've talked about this topic with my wife few times, and although she was understanding, she also looked quite sad. I am not sure whether she interpreted my message as her being "not good enough", or if she actually wants children, but didn't admit it.

I am somewhat afraid that the whole situation will put a strain on our relationship. I've wanted to end this overthinking phase and confront this with Redditors and ask for any sort of general advice on how to manage it.