A complicated wedding anniversary
Today was Chris and my 5th anniversary. We didn’t really celebrate in a big way, although we did go on a trip earlier this month that we kind of figured was partially a celebration of our anniversary.
The thing is, I’m having a bit of trouble celebrating that right now. There’s so much I value about the last five years — but it’s hard to feel like celebrating our anniversary when I really don’t know if our marriage will make it another year. I talked about this a bunch in my last post, but the TL;DR is that I really want kids, and Chris doesn’t particularly. We’re in counselling because we’d really like to stay together — but we’re not sure that’s going to make sense. I came to the conclusion a few months ago that I want kids more than I want to stay married, and Chris keeps going back and forth on whether divorce or having kids sounds worse.
There’s still a part of me that feels guilty — like I’m a bad spouse—for not being willing to not have kids for Chris’s sake — like if Chris makes the sacrifice of staying with me and having kids, that I don’t deserve that sort of love, because I didn’t love Chris enough to not have kids. (Of course, as Chris has pointed out, leaving is another sort of sacrifice. Which in a way just makes me feel doubly guilty — that I’m asking Chris to sacrifice child-free life with me either way, when that’s Chris’s ideal vision of the future).
I’m currently planning my life under the assumption that we stay together, partially because there are even more unknowns in my future if we don’t — but I really don’t know if we will. My future plans are also changing right now, since I’m strongly considering starting a Master’s within the next year (long story short, I went to an industry conference last week in the Small Field¹ in which I did my undergrad thesis, and it was all kinds of amazing; I also found out last week that I could probably do a Master’s thesis focusing on Tiny Subfield at University Near Me, with full tuition funding available — so it wouldn’t pay anything, but it wouldn’t cost anything, either). My emotions are all jumbled right now, because I can almost see not having kids if I can keep doing research in Tiny Subfield—it’s the most fulfilling work I’ve ever done in my life, and in addition to feeling personally important to me, lots of people at Industry Conference were thrilled to hear about my (undergrad, mind you) research in Tiny Subfield and told me how important it was.
I don’t see doing grad school and pursuing a career somehow related to Tiny Subfield as precluding having kids, so I’d much rather have both— the only reason I’m even considering not having kids is because Chris doesn’t want them.
So, this anniversary is complicated for me. The last five years have been full of love and joy and support. I can hardly imagine a life without Chris. But I don’t know whether this relationship is the best thing for both of us, or whether we need to go our separate ways in order to both live our best and most authentic lives.
- ^ I’m not naming Small Field, Industry Conference, Tiny Subfield, or University Near Me for the purposes of keeping this blog anonymous. Basically, Industry Conference was ~350 people, and it’s the largest conference in Small Field. Tiny Subfield has ~5 papers published in Industry Journal, no more than two authors per paper. Since there are only a handful of people in the world who have done any research in Tiny Subfield, and I am (to my knowledge) the only one who has done an undergrad thesis in it, naming Tiny Subfield would definitely count as identifying information.
