Dear Prudence,I’ve felt ambiguous about having children for a long time. My husband has always wanted children. He has health concerns that will make parenting more difficult the older he gets and wants to have kids young enough so that our parents can have active roles in their lives. I am not against having kids—I’ve just never been excited about it. I am (perhaps overly) aware of how exhausting, expensive, and life-changing a child can be. My husband thinks that I let the negatives eclipse the positives (which is probably true). A couple years ago, he suggested we start trying. When I said I wasn’t sure when I’d be ready, he gave me time to think (as our only other option was divorce, which neither of us wanted). Since then, we’ve had many conversations, and I started feeling more open to the idea until I was comfortable enough to go off birth control recently.
I know having a baby is very trying for couples. I worried I might resent my husband for encouraging me down this path, and he would resent me in return. When we’re having sex regularly, we are extremely close, but after a few days without it, my husband starts to get a little distant. It gets worse the longer we go without sex because he just doesn’t feel as close to me. My sex drive is very low naturally, so I read dirty novels to keep my interest up (which works great). Unfortunately, when the reading stops, so does my interest in sex. I worry that the stress of a new baby plus the lack of time and energy to keep my sex drive up could destroy our relationship. But if we don’t have kids, I’d be ending an otherwise happy marriage. My husband insists he knows that many aspects of our life will be different with young kids, but I know that not having sex for weeks at a time is not something he will handle well. I’ve started looking forward to many aspects of being a parent, but I still get doubts sometimes. Is that to be expected? Am I just overthinking this whole thing?
—Overly Anxious