Children outside of a primary partnership

mhwhippet

New member
Hi there, I was wondering if anyone had any experience with anything similar that could help me out with some advice.

My partner and I are in our late 30s and have been together for a year. She is currently in the process of having her eggs frozen, which has led to us thinking seriously about whether we want children. Sadly, we are in different places, her being a probable yes and me a probable no.

We have no desire whatsoever to break up, quite the opposite - we both believe we have found the person who will be most important to us throughout our lives. We currently operate more in an open sexual space, both together and apart, rather than being actively emotionally poly although is is something we have discussed and would potentially be comfortable investiagting.

We both feel that it would be a disservice to the strength of our relationship to not consider all possible options, so what I am asking is this:

Does anyone know of primary partnerships in which one or both partners had children outside of that partnership and the relationship endured?

Any advice, reading, or anything at all would be appreciated.

Thank you, Mark x
 
I don't personally know of any situations like that, but I have seen mention on various groups of people having children with partners outside their primary relationship, and there weren't any serious issues. I've also seen one or two mentions of arrangements where the mother didn't know which of her partners was the biological father and no one cared, they just all raised the child as if it were theirs.

However, consider this: Your partner has a child with someone else. You're referring to this as a "primary" relationship, which implies that you are quite entangled with this woman. You don't mention whether you and she live together; if you do, that adds another layer of complication. See, if she has a child with someone else, you are still going to be interacting with that child, especially if you and your partner live together. You say you don't want children, but in effect you would at the very least be this child's stepparent. You would be in a parental role that it sounds like you don't want. I don't know all the laws, but I do know that in many places, if a woman is legally married when a child is born, her spouse is *legally* that child's parent even if he isn't *biologically*; it sound like you and your partner aren't married, but I would still suggest considering and finding out who would be legally responsible for her child if she had one with another partner.

So while it can work for someone to have a child with a non-primary partner, I can't see it working if the primary partner doesn't want children. There's no way I can see for that primary partner not to be involved in the child's life in some manner.
 
As the mother to 3 children whom I love dearly i will say this.

Children are a lot of work and commitment. They are also a huge financial expense. They are huge emotional drain and add in if you have a child is special needs that adds to the work ten fold. A lot of monogamous marriages do not survive post children.

Butch and I did not have a date night for 6 years due to child care responsibilities. Murf came into my life when my youngest was 5. For my life to take the path it has he has had to become an important part of my kids life too. He treats my children as his own.
 
Does anyone know of primary partnerships in which one or both partners had children outside of that partnership and the relationship endured?

Nope. Not unless the children came from previous marriages. I know several blended step families.

I don't know of any who got married, then had their children later with an secondary or non-nesting partner.

The closest is where a couple that had children, divorced, then one of them remarried and had another child with the new spouse. And the ex-spouse is the godparent to the new child. They also bought next door houses to make coparenting all the children easier. But next door ex spouse/godparent is not nesting partner.

You don't mention being married, but take a good look at the laws where you live. If she has a child by someone else -- if you are her spouse you might be the one listed as parent of the child. So then you are on the hook for the care and keeping of this child.

Even if not legally bound to this child? You are gonna be around that kid a lot if you are primary in her life. Like having a stepkid or biokid of your own.

If you are not into kids at all, that might give you pause for thought. You may prefer to not live together, not be married, be important to each other -- but give her the space to marry the bio-dad if she so chooses. So the bio-dad has all the legal standing things on his side rather than you.

Galagirl
 
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Hello Mark,

I take it your partner is thinking about having one of her frozen eggs fertilized by someone else, a secondary partner. If so, how do you feel about that? Also, to what extent do you think you would be involved in the child's life? How do you feel about that level of involvement? Do any of your feelings at this time pose any threat to your relationship with her? That's the first hurdle you must get past.

Your partner will want to live with any child she has. So you will either need to live with the child, or not live with your partner. Plus there's the question of whom she should marry, that and the other things that the others have mentioned in this thread. Your relationship with her may endure, but it may transition into a secondary relationship. The biological father becoming the primary relationship. These are just things you have to consider.

I hope the two of you can work things out.
Sincerely,
Kevin T.
 
Sadly, we are in different places, her being a probable yes and me a probable no.

As Dagferi says, children are a lot of work and commitment and a huge financial stress. Until you have a child in your life, you cannot imagine how much that presence takes over everything. I get that you and your GF love each other to the moon and back, but this mismatch is serious. Children take over your life as you know it, never to be the same. The egg freezing just kicks the can down the road. You have an ENORMOUS mismatch in your relationship, as huge as being gay vs. straight.
 
I knew of one case of a couple where one partner felt similarly to you and thought they could be the nesting partner of a young child's parent with minimal interaction with the child. They didn't think through the reality of it. Partner became resentful of the child's growing attachment to them plus the assumption that they were a parent of the child and the judgement from others at them being what appeared to be a detached parent. Eventually, the child's other parent essentially gave their co-parent an ultimatum as they felt it was emotionally abusive for their kid to grow up in that situation. The nesting partners' opted to downgrade their relationship to non nesting, they stayed together for some time, but eventually grew apart.
 
Does anyone know of primary partnerships in which one or both partners had children outside of that partnership and the relationship endured?

I already had older kids with Woof when Mitch and I decided to have a kid (with Woof’s full awareness and support). The little one and I move between our two homes, on a somewhat weekly schedule, but with significantly more time at Mitch’s. Neither partner is my prescriptive “primary.” Woof is very involved in the little one’s life. *And yet* the reality is that since having the youngest, I spend much more time with Mitch, in order to give him and our (now three-year-old) child the experience of sharing the nest. Anyone seeing my relationships from the outside would see Woof as no longer primary. And this is with me having an absolutely anti-hierarchical personal philosophy, *and* children with both partners, who *both* wanted to be parents.

What others have said about being involved in a “primary” partner’s young child’s life is absolutely true. If Woof didn’t embrace the little one’s presence (enthusiastically taking on a stepparent/present godparent/active grandparent role), Woof and I would not be able to maintain our (admittedly practically diminished) partnership.

If you don’t want the obligation of living with and caring for children, it would be best to accept that your primary partner having children will likely end your relationship. There may be a way to have a peripheral, non-nesting sort of relationship as the child(ren) aged, but intentional parenting is way too time-and-focus-consuming to have a non-participating adult comfortably living in the household, presenting as “family,” or otherwise requiring the time and attention usually afforded to a nesting partner.

In my opinion, it would be kindest to finalize your decision and reframe the relationship now, rather than hang around making it harder for your partner to find a willing co-parent, and then adding the processing of a (very likely) relationship loss to the huge burden of new parenthood. I know that’s hard to hear and hard to do. But no one needs the extra stress and drama of you all finally accepting this after there’s a child to care for.
 
If you really don't want to be a parent, then living with someone who is or wants to be a parent is never going to work unless one of you changes your mind. Because either the person wanting to be a parent is going to have to cave and not have kids to appease the other, or the person not wanting to be a parent is basically going to become a step-parent or parental like figure, because you can't live in a house with a kid present and just ignore them. I mean, sure, you could, but people will resent you for not helping, the kid won't get that you don't want anything to do with it, and you will get dragged into the mix one way or the other. Or you'll end up being resentful of each other and the relationship will fall apart.

I have no desire to have kids or be any sort of parent. I'm willing to date people that are parents if I know I'll never live with that person, but my nesting partner knows that if he were to ever have kids with another partner, that would be a deal breaker to us living together, because I'm not interested in being a step-parent. We have a roommate who has custody of his daughter about ever other weekend and that is the MAX exposure I want to living with kids, and I at least have the distance of it being a roommate's kid and not a partners, so there is a clearer line between parental responsibilities (and also the kid is 6, so she's reached a certain level of self sufficiency where there isn't constant crying, smelly diapers, etc, etc.).
 
Long story short (long story long is elsewhere on this site):

Kids/No Kids seems to me to be a dichotomy that seems to divide people - black and white. Which it is for some.

When MrS and I got together, I thought I might want kids "someday" and he thought that he didn't. It wasn't a dealbreaker for either of us. After much discussion and observation, we were both in the "having kids" camp for a while. It didn't work for us, 1 miscarriage in 9 years is what what happened.

Enter Dude - who says he DOESN'T want kids.

I haven't entirely given up on the idea, and MrS is willing to raise a baby that isn't biologically HIS if it comes to that if that is what I want. So we talk...and talk...and talk some more. The outcome is that, IF I get pregnant, THEN MrS is the "father" regardless of the sperm donor (which happens to correlate with PA state law) and Dude agrees that he will sign over parental rights, if necessary, in that case. (And can be "favorite uncle" or "family friend" or some other non-primary-parental role).

So I get pregnant, and the pregnancy fails, again. This is a huge roller-coaster for everyone. We are all, technically, nesting partners. A kid in the house affects every single minute of every single day.

Being a parent (or the significant other of a parent) is a huge responsibility and a 24/7 one at that. Even if you are NOT the parent, you have to be prepared to "cover" their roles in your life if they have to attend to parenting duties. (You have an invite to a business Guest+1 event - the kid is sick, parent gets called into work unexpectedly on "their" weekend with kiddo and no daycare available on weekends, someone has to let the electrician in on "Daddy-Daughter-Day" etc. etc.)
 
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