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Relationship Sufferers with csa - how you have dealt with issues and fears around having children of your own?

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Hojay

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I’m going to go out on a limb and post in this section. I’m a supporter, so please feel free to move this post if it’s not appropriate for this section.

My partner suffers from PTSD due to CSA. Things aren’t smooth sailing, of course, but we’re committed and love each other. His stance on starting a family has always been that he’d like to, but wants to be in a good enough place with himself to guarantee he will be a good father.

Now, three years later, re-traumatized by a horrible therapist, averse to classic therapy, and mostly occupied with keeping himself sane and stable (which he’s successfully doing for the most part,) he’s told me that he can’t guarantee he will be ready to have kids in a time frame that makes sense for us. He is willing to do anything he can to help himself deal and heal (perhaps DBT groups, excerise, books, mediation groups etc.) just not classic therapy anymore.

Essentially, he is scared of how confronting having children will be for him, that he won’t be able to cope, and let his children down. I fully understand his logic. It’s his right to say he doesn’t want kids, if that’s what his decision is, and I would never blame him for it.

But he doesn’t say he doesn’t want them, he says he can’t guarantee he will be capable, and most arguments he brings are based on hypotheticals and fears that haven’t been confirmed (that he’ll check out, that he’ll resent his children, that he won’t be able to keep his panick attacks at bay.) There’s pressure mounting now for him to “get better” in an appropriate time frame, which is about as counter productive as it can get for actually getting better.

Of course, it’s up to me to make a choice if I can take the risk, wait a few more years, and possibly not build a family at all. I’m aware of my own power of choice here, as well as his.

My question to you in this section is how you have dealt with issues and fears around having children of your own. It’s somewhat of a vague and open question, I realize that. But perhaps someone has been in a similar situation with their own supporter and has some wise words to share. Thank you.
 
I don't think I'll ever be ready to have children even if I could have them, which I don't.

I thought about adopting eventually but there are too many factors: sleep, mood, general instability when ptsd does its thing. The fear of not being able to provide a stable environment is huge, even if on the outside I'm the most stable person you'll ever meet on most days.

With a mental illness we need to put ourselves first so many times that it can become a strain on the child if we lose focus.

But. But I think nevertheless I would make a good mom, I think weighing my options is not a bad thing but maybe I'm seeing this with a negative lens and complicating too much.

I'm not able to have my own children, but maybe someday I can adopt. Maybe.

There's also this distortion that I'm just like my parents, due to self blame. But I'm learning to actually see myself instead of have an idea that doesn't represent reality.

One thing is for certain, I wouldn't have children without lots of therapy first.
 
I don't think I'll ever be ready to have children even if I could have them, which I don't.

I thought a...

Wow, you’ve said much of what I feel.

Before you say hey Eve, you’re moving too fast in your new relationship...I know. My new guy has been wanting a vasectomy for awhile now because of his own struggles and let me know he doesn’t want any more kids. To be honest it’s only fair to be upfront about the kids issue from the beginning. He has his own mental health struggles and can’t see bringing kids into this world. I always had the idea of having a nice family, but OMG the work! I have never had the disillusionment of how cute babies are as many teenagers/young women go through (for my own reasons) and knew I’d have to be rock solid before having kids. Well, fast forward...stability is precarious and time is running out. I realize kids just aren’t on my horizon. Yes I’m sad, but I need to accept this fate. This is why I’m determined to be the best aunt EVER!

Kids shrieking sends me over the edge. Not sleeping sends me over the edge. My brother in law was so funny. He says to me OMG try getting by on three-five hours of sleep a night! It’s murder. I just thought to myself you amateur. I have ptsd and that is NOTHING compared to my extended insomnia experiences. Nothing! He’d get my compassion when his bad sleep was in the neighborhood of mine, lol. But, I was polite and smiled.

My goals are getting stable, going back to school and getting a different job. Kids aren’t in my near future plans. Stability is my number one priority from here on out. Kids would just threaten this stability and it’s not fair to drag them into this kind of situation.
 
stability is precarious and time is running out
Exactly. Maybe in 10 years when I no longer have eggs lol

I realize kids just aren’t on my horizon. Yes I’m sad, but I need to accept this fate.
Mine neither. I still want them but maybe more because most women around me already have them and I feel I'm not a complete person.

Stability is my number one priority from here on out
Sane here! And same here :roflmao:

Kids would just threaten this stability and it’s not fair to drag them into this kind of situation.
Exactly.
 
let his children down.
This is something I've been struggling with for some time now. I want to have kids and the doctor has told me that because of my age, time is of the essence. Since we decided, my PTSD symptoms have come back and now I worry that I won't be a good mom. The thought of causing harm, in any way, to my child terrifies me.

Logically, I know PTSD or not, there are no guarantees one will be a good parent. It's hard to get passed that fear though. This week, for me at least, I have decided that my desire to have kids is greater than my fear of the effects of my PTSD. So, I'm going to tell my husband I'm ready to start trying if he is, and push through therapy no matter how hard it is and get into the best place I can before we actually have a kid.

This is me though, and we can't speak for your husband, but I totally understand his fear. Maybe just have a candid conversation - PTSD will not automatically make him a bad parent just like not having PTSD won't make him a good one.

There are some other members on this site who have kids and whose PTSD is more symptomatic than mine. They struggle to be around their children, and it causes a lot of heartache. So, it won't be easy. That's something to think about as well.
 
There is no easy answer to this question. I was asking myself this 30 years ago when my wife was looking at me telling me she was pregnant and I didn't even know her hardly. They are all grown up now in years a least two of them being extremely Autistic, will never completely finish growing up or live without assistance. You don't know what's going to happen any more than you know if you'll be alive tomorrow. There are no guarantees. You may end up the best, most wonderful, loving parents that ever brought a child into the world and end up with a bad kid. God forbid anyone should ever outlive a child. It happens though, like everything else. Times like these faith comes in. How could you do it any other way? Good luck, and if you decide to do it, may you be blessed with a beautiful family.
 
@EveHarrington, I am. The flare up is new but something I’ve noticed is I can still function despite it. And a child is for life, I’ll have more flare ups in the future. Why wait until this one passes? That being said, I’m sticking with therapy and focusing on lifestyle changes and other things I can do to make sure I manage better in the future so I don’t crash too hard.

What I’ve also noticed is I’ve processed most of the traumas I can remember. They’re not impacting me the same way they used to. There are new things from my younger years that have come to the surface recently, but we are working through those now while also reinforcing some other changes.
 
I will few things that are contradictory to each other. He is not saying full no as much as you cannot say full yes. Both of these response and commitments must be simultaneously so he is saying he cannot guarantee because that is more truthful at the moment for him. You want certainty (even though having and wanting children are two different things). He is more at fence of making anything certain.

I really hope you explore your needs, your situation in this relationship, and your own future aspirations with a therapist, regardless of being supporter to your husband or not. I hope you find a way to reach a good decision on this topic. I also think if you explore this with therapist (which maybe you are already, I do not know), then you may also have more understanding and accepting about your husband's ambivalence of having children...a lot of maybes here. No one knows the future! Maybe everything will change tomorrow.

I have CPTSD and my husband is much younger and we tried hard to have children. After 5 miscarriages, we called it quits. Every miscarriage was another loss, another grieving and another mourning and five we thought was a bit even on my already taxed body/mind.

My husband has to also come to his own conclusion of why or why not have children? He decided his love for me was more important than having children and we are now happy (as much as one can be happy at any moment) of not having children. I completely left that decision to my husband to make. It is his life, his dreams being dashed, and he needed to make a decision for himself that he could live with. I completely and consciously stayed out of his path to reach where he got. There can be an argument that he is a younger man and anything happens, he could still have children but that is OK too. Maybe that made it easy for him to reach there in comparison to a woman who has no such option biologically so it is hard to compare a man and woman reproduction things. But also there are many couples of all varying ages with no kids and happily ever after. Life is rich in so many ways. I risked of losing him and made peace that was a possibility than attaching so much pressure on myself to produce a baby.

I read somewhere (I cannot remember it now) that sometimes for some people with PTSD, having children actually sort of reset it the clock. They learn how to do everything that was screwed over last time with their children so this is still something to explore. So who knows, maybe your husband is one of those people who could benefit from a reset and having a child who did not have similar background - sort of break the cycle thing.

I do not know.

I hope YOU find your peace in this as a woman. It is tough and it is not guarantee that every woman can have a child too. It would be greatly beneficial to your relationship and to you personally and would take some pressure off if you venture out to find your own peace about this regardless of his hesitance. I can understand his reluctance in this matter but I also truly get your feelings and needs around this very fundamental issue.
 
I'm a little late coming back to this, apologies. I needed to take a minute and digest this turning point for us, even just to figure out how much of a turning point it really is.

It's difficult to suss out just what has changed since we talked about this at other points in our relationship. He's always been of the opinion that he wants children, but we wants to be stable to be the best father he can be. To him, now, it's about not being able to make any guarantees. But he couldn't make them a few years ago either, so what's new? I know he feels guilty and afraid; afraid I'll leave him, afraid I will wait for him and hate him if it doesn't work out; afraid of making the wrong choices. It's all very understandable.

Perhaps it's a negativity I'm sensing, something like hopelessness that he'll ever be alright with himself? There's also a new time frame. I still have a good number of years to go until it's crunch time re. pregnancy, but I think even those years seem like pressure to him--a time frame he can't quite grasp in terms of what they will look like in recovery.

You guys said some great stuff that I want to address:

With a mental illness we need to put ourselves first so many times that it can become a strain on the child if we lose focus.
Yes, this. He's expressed this too. In fact, he said it takes so much energy for him sometimes to just get from one day to the next, he can't envision putting a child into the mix. It sounds defeated, depressed, actually. He says he's not hopeless, but it sure sounds like it to me.

But. But I think nevertheless I would make a good mom, I think weighing my options is not a bad thing but maybe I'm seeing this with a negative lens and complicating too much.
This is what I'm wondering about too. Sometimes people use realism as a front for pessimism. And I wonder how much of that my guy is doing now. He's going through all the eventualities, hypotheticals, what ifs--I wonder how much of it is a realistic assessment and how much of it is plain old fear.

Logically, I know PTSD or not, there are no guarantees one will be a good parent.
I've been thinking about this too a lot. Even without PTSD there's no guarantee that we won't screw up our kids royally.

Maybe just have a candid conversation - PTSD will not automatically make him a bad parent just like not having PTSD won't make him a good one.
That's where our conversations are going, yes. However, I can only get so far with this reasoning. 1. he has insane expectations of himself as a father and 2. it's as much about being a good father as it is about his own mental stability--himself. That's where it gets really tricky. I can't, nor do I want to, argue him into something he believes wouldn't be "good for him." Problem is, he hasn't said (nor does he know!) that it wouldn't be good for him. He just thinks it maybe could be somehow maybe not.

Times like these faith comes in. How could you do it any other way? Good luck, and if you decide to do it, may you be blessed with a beautiful family.
Thank you, Mach123. I've been thinking a lot about faith lately--what it means to take a leap of it. Something he said really stuck with me: "Whether or not my PTSD will screw everything up isn't something you'd want to find out when the kid is in front of you." He's right. But I could say the same thing. There's a possibility I'd be a horrid mother. Do I want to find out if that's the case once that irreversible decision has been made and a kid exists? Yeah I would. Then again, I have faith in myself. I trust myself more than he does himself. I think that's a big part of it.

You want certainty (even though having and wanting children are two different things).
I don't want certainty. I don't believe that ever exists in life. I never asked a guarantee from him. He came up with that concept all by himself. What's changed is that he's gone from "I want children when I'm ready" to "I don't know if I'll ever be ready." So really, it's not so much the certainty that's changed, it's the framing. It's gone from hopeful to something potentially hopeless.

Maybe that made it easy for him to reach there in comparison to a woman who has no such option biologically so it is hard to compare a man and woman reproduction things.
I think you're very right. And I've been thinking a lot about how men make choices about children versus women. I can't think of one, not one, couple where the man was the driving force behind having children. It was always the woman who, with varying degrees of firmness, made that choice for herself and asked whether the man was on board. That's another layer of confusion for me here. I was never under any illusion he'd one day wake up and be all excited about having kids. I always knew it'd be a carefully weighed decision, one both of us make together, albeit me being the main driving force behind it. That's why this conversation, the timing of it, really threw me for a loop. Why are we talking about guarantees when we should be talking about our respective fears and what we can do about them?

I read somewhere (I cannot remember it now) that sometimes for some people with PTSD, having children actually sort of reset it the clock. They learn how to do everything that was screwed over last time with their children so this is still something to explore.
Yes. And I could guarantee you--I'd actually bet my dear life on it--that children would reframe and reshape so much of his life in a positive sense. He would be a wonderful father, brimming with love. That alone would be a powerful force for him to refocus on something that is more important than himself and his condition. I know it. He, well, not so much. I'm not claiming it wouldn't be difficult for him at points. Yes, more difficult than for others without PTSD. But I also don't think it would be as much of a disaster as his worst fears tell him. That's where the gender dynamics above come back in, I believe. Unlike motherhood for many (not all, I know) woman, the pleasures of fatherhood are abstract until they aren't. That just adds another layer of murkiness to this whole situation....
 
Of course, it’s up to me to make a choice if I can take the risk, wait a few more years, and possibly not build a family at all.
This thread is hitting hard for me. I never wanted kids. When I had a really late period I found out my boyfriend really wanted them and everything changed for me. Now I want them. But as far as I can tell I don't want kids....I want HIS kids. And I used to really see that happening one day.

Now that he broke up with me but then never followed through and still can't talk about.....I am at a loss. He shared SO MUCH with me during our fake break up that he never planned on telling me.

And now that I have a better glimpse into his head and have experienced him freaking out with every intention of leaving..... I can't put my kid through that. I choose this. But that would be me making that decision for them.

Since he's untreated and continuously exposing himself to more trauma....it can only get worse.

I am now in a place where I can ride it out with him and have extra spoiled nieces and nephews. Or I can leave him in pursuit of finding someone to have kids with.....all before I dry up.

Sorry that was a bit off topic....but I just really related to that. We'll see what happens.
 
What's changed is that he's gone from "I want children when I'm ready" to "I don't know if I'll ever be ready." So really, it's not so much the certainty that's changed, it's the framing. It's gone from hopeful to something potentially hopeless.
I think this is the conversation you need to have. Take babies out of the conversation, more of less, and focus on what has changed for him. I think sometimes, some of us are struggling more than we let on. See if you can get to the root of those thoughts/feelings and find out what is driving them, babies aside. Once you know that, my guess is you'll be able to understand him better, where he's coming from, and where to go from here regarding children.
 
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