AITA for telling my husband I don’t want kids a year into our marriage. Now we don’t know what to do
I (25F) and my husband (27M) have been married for just over a year now, we have been together just over 5 years.
I have never been someone who had the overwhelming desire to be a mother, being maternal never came naturally to me. When me and my husband first met in 2021 kids were definitely in the conversation as we got me serious. My husband said he wants one child at some point in his life and I agreed.
We have a very good relationship and we really are best friends, bought a house together in 2022, engaged in 2023.
In late 2023, I decided to come of the contraceptive pill due to it effecting my mental and physical health. We had a discussion around other contraception and we got into the topic of kids, long story short a few months after coming off the contraception we decided to try for a baby.
We both had prior medical conditions which meant making a baby has not guaranteed to be straight forward. But just 2 months after trying I fell pregnant (Feb 2024). We was both and mix of excited and scared, we had a first private scan at 7 weeks and all was well but unfortunately at our 12 weeks scan we found out our baby has stopped developing and around 10 weeks and there was no longer a heart beat.
This was an incredibly tough time for us both, my body had not realised the baby had passed so was not processing the miscarriage. I had to go into hospital for 2 days to have the miscarriage done medically. This was also not a great experience and I ended up unconscious for almost an hour. This was terrifying for my husband, who was sat by my side the whole time.
A few months after this, we decided we were not going to think about kids or trying for a baby for a few years. This did have some effect on our sex like as I did not go back onto contraception after the miscarriage due to the issues I experienced before.
There was still things we wanted to do in life and we wanted to focus on ourselves for a bit instead. We had a good few years not thinking about kids, as I turned 25 and saw a lot of people around me having babies or planning to start families the more I felt like it was not for me. I have some immediate family with small children and I never feel the want or need to have children of my own whenever I am around them. I don’t really know how to communicate with children I just end up talking to them like an adult. Doing baby voices and playing pretend just does not come naturally to me and the more time I spend around kids and babies the more uncomfortable I feel.
I just feel like have no strong feelings towards have children in my life ever and I have not felt maternal, I knew a child had always been a part of my husbands life plans. We got married mid 2025 and we did really talk about having children since the miscarriage but the feelings I was having around not having children started not long after our honeymoon.
It is also important to note that not long after the miscarriage I was diagnosed with a chronic illness that I will have to be on medication for the rest of my life and I knew this would highly impact a pregnancy at any point in the future making it very difficult for me and my health though a pregnancy. This was a large factor in my decision.
Over the past year now, I have been processing these thought and feeling with myself to come to the decision that having children is not for me. It has taken a long time to come to this for myself and I did not want to mention it to my husband until I was certain.
Well, last night the conversation came us as my husband could tell I had been acting strange the past week or so as I know I wanted to have this conversation but didn’t know how to bring it up. And in situations like this I generally just shut down. I am someone who has suffered with my mental health and extreme anxiety pretty much my whole life and sometimes I am difficult to communicate with because of this.
The subject of me not wanting children has come up a couple of times in passing conversations over the past few weeks. I said that I don’t think he took what I was saying then seriously but it’s true and that I have come to the decision that I don’t want to have children. I ran through my reasoning with me and it was very calm, caring and understanding. I told him at this point my main concern was him. I did not want to waste him life with me if not having children would make him unhappy. I love him so much and I can’t hold him back if that’s something he wants in life. He said he needs some time to think about it for himself, which is totally fair.
I’m so scared of losing him but equally scared of holding him back and making him life and future unhappy. His happiness is my main priority and if that is not with me because we will not be having children I might have to let him go.
AITA for telling my husband I don’t want children after we got married?