Esther Perel is a psychotherapist, a best-selling author, and the host of the podcast Where Should We Begin? She’s also a leading expert on contemporary relationships. This column is adapted from the podcast — which is now part of the Vox Media Podcast Network — and you can listen and follow for free on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen.
This week’s “Esther Calling” caller has never wanted to have children, but his current partner does. Given their shared goal of staying together, he wants to know how to approach this “potential mismatch” in conversations.
Over the course of their conversation, Esther Perel helps the caller understand that his anxiety around having children stems from his general anxiety about the future and his feeling of disconnection from his family. The caller left his home country to pursue a career in academia, and now that he’s about to finish his Ph.D., he is feeling more uncertain than ever about where his professional life will take him. Perel helps him understand that want he needs is to reconnect more deeply with his own family, even if they are far away, in order to really understand his own feelings about starting his own.
Esther Perel: Give me a glimpse of the conversation. You said, “I usually have been more firm about this, but at this moment I am more ambivalent. She is not really sure what she wants, but she wants the possibility of deciding what she wants without having someone else deciding for her.”
Caller: If I have to be honest, this is purely because with previous partners, they have themselves been fairly certain that they don’t want kids as well. So it’s been fairly easy to deal with it in that way, there just hasn’t been a continuing conversation about the subject. With this partnership, I just feel very invested and I’m really trying to make a long-term plan with her. So in a sense, taking this into consideration and seeing how a future life could pan out together, I’m reminded of it more regularly.
Esther: It’s not so much that she knows what she wants, but she knows that she doesn’t want someone else to restrict her decision.
Caller: Yes, I have to be honest. She hasn’t been so forthcoming as to what has brought on this potential change into perhaps wanting to have kids. I feel like she’s always been just ambivalent.
Esther: What are your ages?
Caller: I am 30 and she is 35. But just recently some members of her family have started having kids. Some of some members in her social circle have started having kids. I think bringing a child into her world has just been a little bit more present in her mind as well.
Esther: And have you been able to be curious about all of that?
Caller: We do talk fairly regularly. With the friends or members of her family that have kids, she seems to be really enjoying being able to be with them. I think that’s what she has hinted at. I haven’t really asked, specifically, “What has been the trigger that has been making her change her mind?” I think I should, now that you bring it up. That is something very concrete that I can ask her.
Esther: I think it’s a very valid question. I may keep it a little bit more open: “You used to be more removed from the desire to have children, and you seem to have the subject of children on your mind more. I know age matters. I know context matters. I know that the presence of children in your life can make a difference. Tell me what you’ve been feeling, experiencing, encountering. We are not making any decision at this moment, but I would love to listen.”
Caller: I think that’s what I have been telling her all along, that even though right now we might not be exactly agreeing upon whether we both want children, I usually try to frame the conversation so that we don’t have to see this as an impasse. It’s simply a place to talk about how we’re both currently feeling about the subject at the moment.
Esther: But when you talk about the subject, you talk about the decision about the subject, rather than the meaning. What do children represent for you? What is the presence of children in your life? What does it bring up for you? What does parenthood evoke for you? How do you see that changing? Having children means also becoming a parent. It also means creating a different type of family. What is family? What makes family for us?
You, simply for biological reasons, at least without any artificial input, you have a blank slate in terms of the timelessness of your question, provided that things go fine. Your partner as a woman has a different biological reality. So your existential questions are biologically influenced in different ways. Sometimes when people are busy with “Yea or nay?,” the conversation becomes about “Yea or nay?” rather than the thing itself. So talk to me about what you know about you and about her when it comes to what these children evoke for you?
Caller: The thing that I immediately jump to my young cousins, because I myself do quite well with young kids. I think I’m quite playful and silly, so I can get along well with young kids. I think of all the different members of my family that I’ve been able to play with and grow up with.
Esther: And you’re making an important distinction here, right? Tell me if I hear you well. Are you bringing this up because you’re telling me not wanting children is not the same as not loving children? That you may not want to have kids, that doesn’t mean that you don’t love kids. I wonder if that was embedded in the story of the cousins.
Caller: I think that to some extent it is. I’ve never had an issue with children or playing with kids. I quite appreciate when I get to play with the younger members of my family, I really enjoy that. I can’t really tell you why there’s then a distinction in my mind about seeing myself in the parenting role of those same kids, if that makes sense. I have just never seen myself in those shoes. I’ve never filled those shoes.
Esther: Keep going. And for her?
Caller: I think for her, her family is much smaller. The relationship that she has with her mother is okay, but it’s not the most open and emotionally available kind of relationship out there. I don’t really want to speak a lot about her without her being able to defend herself, but I’ll say what I think is fair. She really values support networks. I think she has that in her friend group and a little bit in her family. I think, for her, children also means a broader support network that would come around both just because of the realities of having a kid, having to take them to school and be involved in their day-to-day activities, that you form a social circle around children, that you actually form a family network.
Esther: Right. So children are one way we make family and children are also a doorway to community. Beautiful. And?
Caller: I think, as far as I have gathered, those are the main takeaways, her main reasonings, as far as I understand.
Esther: And when you sit with her leanings toward wanting a child, what happens to you?
Caller: So I told her this in our most recent conversation: If it was between not having a child and not having her, or having a child and having her, I would rather have her and the child. That is simply because I have her now and I love her. I want to be with her. Having a child — even though it’s a sacrifice, it’s something that is valuable and something that I do see as a thing that is, like, that has worth in itself. So I’m not opposed to the idea of just being with her and having a child; it’s just perhaps right now it’s not my ideal situation or my preference.
Esther: So now you told me what you think. I ask you, What do you feel in those moments when you feel the part of her that says, “Yes, I would like to have a child”? Because there’s the part of her that says, “I’m not sure. I don’t know. I don’t want to.” And there’s the part of her that says “yes.” And when you are in conversation with the part of her that says “yes,” what do you feel? Not what agreement do you make, but what happens to you emotionally?
Caller: I think there’s a couple components that I can bring up. I do get some fear about financial instability because it’s something that I take into consideration, something that I try to work on for myself to be financially stable. I would feel afraid of managing that in the future for a growing family. I feel insecure about being a parent. I can take care of myself. I cook, I clean, I make sure that I have a reasonable adult life, but I just feel insecure about taking care of somebody else. Perhaps is a little bit irrational on my side but I feel a little bit guilty about the environmental impact of having a child, which is something that I take into consideration. It’s a big decision and a big burden for the family, a person, a community, and the Earth at large. And then the last thing that I sometimes feel very briefly is a fear of losing my partner in the relationship that then would grow between the child, my partner, and myself.
Esther: Yes. “I would do this out of love for you, but your love for the kid would take you away from me.”
Caller: I don’t know how rational or how true that could be, but that is what I sometimes feel.
Esther: Yes, and you asked me about other couples. This is a very normal and common thought. It’s not particularly irrational. It’s very emotional. It doesn’t sound sometimes like it’s a nice thing to feel, but it’s a very human feeling. And it is equally a common feeling to say, t”his brings up some insecurities for me. How can I do this? Am I capable? Can I take care of someone else? Can I bear the responsibility of this child that’s going to need me? Until the day when I need them, by the way.” Don’t forget that. Kids don’t stay little forever.
And then there is the responsibility about finances or about maybe what you think is the role of the father or man. What you will notice is that a conversation about having a child is a conversation about many other things and that where you need to make a shift is that your conversation is way too narrow. It’s about “yea, nay, yea, nay” rather than “what does this bring up for me?” You just did it beautifully. “I’m vulnerable about this, I question that, I’m not sure here, I have some fear, I have some trepidation.” Actually, much of what you talked about were different manifestations of things that you’re afraid of and unsure about. That’s what you need to talk about. It’s you, not kids. The conversation about kids is a conversation about parts of you that you don’t typically discuss.
Caller: I haven’t known how to breach it. I think I completely agree with you. Something that I’ve been thinking about is how I myself come from a supportive big family. I feel like I need a support network around me, whether it is friends or colleagues or family and throughout my life, I’ve had it more, I’ve had it less. And in moments where I don’t have it, I find it really strange how I would not want to have a family of my own and why I don’t feel like wanting to make a family that could eventually down the line be some of the stronger long-term kind of support structure, things in your life that can also take care of you in return once they’ve grown into their own personalities and humans.
Esther: But I want to make sure that I understand what you’re saying. “When I think about having a child and I look at my support system and my community at this moment, one thing that it brings up for me is the fear of being alone and lonely.”
Caller: Yes, that is a persistent fear I have had.
Esther: That you have currently as well?
Caller: I’m not resourced enough in my life. Even though I came from a very communal supportive experience, somehow I have not recreated that in my life. I feel often alone, and I fear that with a child, I would even feel more alone.
So I agree with everything up until the end. I don’t particularly think that with a child I would feel more alone. The thing that I question is why I don’t even feel an inkling of desire to have a child or a broader family where I have kids in those moments where I do feel alone.
Esther: Ah, I see. Beautiful. Given that I feel sometimes so alone, it would seem natural for me to think about ways to broaden my circle and have a child because sometimes people do think like that. Sometimes people say, “I feel often so alone now with a child that I’m responsible for, it would feel even bigger. Having a child is not always experienced as “I’m broadening my circle.” Sometimes it’s experienced as one more thing that I’m going to have to be all in charge of by myself.
Caller: I know quite a bit of people who for the child have had to sacrifice career or social meetings or whatever. So I think I know what you mean in that sense. I have always been curious why I just don’t feel like a father. I don’t feel any sense of being a paternal figure, even though it could create quite a bit of — I’m going to make up a word — un-loneliness.
Esther: Of connection. Of a particular kind of love that is very unique, different from romantic love, from filial love, from friendship, but that comes also with a sense of responsibility and competence. And what you’re saying to me is “sometimes I question my competence.” So tell me more about that. The financial security, the question around fatherhood, the fact that you haven’t thought about it. You’re 30. You’re five years younger than your partner. Men and women may arrive at 30 and that’s not something they’ve been thinking about. They’ve pretty much been spending more time thinking about themselves, what they need to build their lives, their circle, etc. And some people arrive to family and parenthood and the new community having not really thought about it and said, “this is what I want, this is my goal in life.” It’s just kind of the next thing they do. Or it is the thing that they didn’t feel strongly enough and it’s not a sacrifice, it’s a gift.
So the fact that you haven’t sat there and said that “my whole life I’ve dreamt about being a dad,” that doesn’t say much. Unless we figure out what it says, we can’t assume in and of itself what it means. But I do hear you say, “I have fears. And these fears come up when I start to think about children.” I want to ask you to tell me a bit about those fears. And then I’m going to ask you to bring them to her. Just because that’s a different conversation and that’s maybe scary in and of itself because then you say “if I tell her some of the more shadowy sides of me, maybe she will think less of me.” It’s not an easy conversation.
Caller: I have been trying my hardest to be as open and as smart about emotions as I can. So I will try to be as open as I can, especially taking something from here to her.
Esther: This is a practice session. And the fact that you’re even doing it with me, who you’ve just met two minutes ago, is very courageous. Just so we establish that. I’m asking you difficult and big questions without any preamble.
Caller: That’s fair. I think I have some evidence in my podcast player of how you can be tactful about these types of conversations. So I feel very, very trusting.
But when it comes to thinking about kids, the only fear that I have is not of the thought of kids in the future. I have generally quite a bit of insecurities about my broader future as a whole. I can give you a little bit of context if it helps. I moved away from my home country when I was 16 and ever since then I’ve been living in a variety of different cities and/or countries. Currently I’m finishing a Ph.D. My partner is doing a postdoctoral stay in a different country, so she’ll finish later in the summer and hopefully move back with me. But I have had for the longest time a fear of the future, because I just don’t know where my career is going to be. So, as an academic, you’re always kind of on the edge of whether you’re going to succeed or fail or what is the next step? What is this next smart thing? I haven’t had a place that I could really call home, so in that sense, I don’t feel like the citizen of any single country.
All of this means that when I look five years, ten years, 20 years in the future, I feel isolated and removed from everywhere that I’ve been. I feel isolated from my original home country, from the intermediate places that I’ve been. And I’m unsure what my profession will be. So I know that some of these things are perhaps overthinking it in the future, but they are the lingering and recurring thoughts that provide this overarching fear of the future and anxiety as a whole.
Esther: Have you brought that up with her?
Caller: Yes, she very much knows that I’m insecure about where I will end up, that I have no feeling of home, or — I can’t say no sense of space — but no sense of where is the right place to settle.
Esther: And she is home for you.
Caller: Right now she is the person that I can open myself up emotionally the most to and that I trust the most. She’s only been caring and supportive of me and helped me throughout my work.
Esther: And when you say she’s the person I can open up and bear my heart to, does that create home for you inside?
Caller: Yeah, I think in some ways it makes it much easier for me to not have as big of a social support or a familial support network in the moments where I’ve had her present with me, and that we can have a routine. That’s very, very comforting. It’s much easier for me to leave my stressors at work. I can leave them behind and really just kind of try to enjoy the time with her.
Esther: You have. And she’s in another country. And when you are wherever you are, do you have a social circle? Do you have close bonds? Do you have other friends with whom to have this conversation with?
Caller: No. I have good colleagues and I get along very well with them and I have nice times with them. But I can’t say that I have really deep, emotional, meaningful conversations with any of them. The few people that I can have these conversations with are people here and there that I’ve met in previous places that I’ve lived or in previous lives that every once in a while I’m able to reconnect to, but it’s not a regular thing. So on a day-to-day basis, it’s mostly her. For this level of depth, it’s mostly her.
Esther: And where is your own family? How connected are you to them?
Caller: So this is something that I’ve been trying to do better. My original family, they are in Colombia and I try to call them at least once a week. I try to have good conversations. It is very difficult to have deep emotional conversations with them through the phone. I have tried to at least be a little bit more open and more present and I do try to call them and be regularly with them. But, this is just for myself. I don’t think I have the level of depth in the relationship with them that I wish I could have.
Esther: Who would you like to have it with first?
Caller: I think with my sisters and my parents initially, being that they are the closest, and I think with uncles and aunts.
Esther: And if I said, “pick one to start”?
Caller: Without thinking about it, the first thought would be one of my sisters.
Esther: Okay, which one?
Caller: I am the oldest, she would be the middle one.
Esther: Okay. That’s what you’re going to do. Because what I’m hearing is, “I don’t have a home and I am a bit of a wandering child. I’ve been uprooted and I feel far away from home and far away from my roots, my language, my large circle of people. And sometimes I can’t even believe how I left such a vibrant community to find myself quite isolated. So, it’s very difficult for me to think about children or a child, period. I need to reconnect with family and community first to create a different context for the conversation about children.” That is not always for everybody, but that’s what I’m hearing for you. So there’s not one direction here.
So your sister, does she have kids?
Caller: No, she does not.
Esther: Okay. But you can say, “I’m in a transition. My partner is about to end her post-doc. She’s thinking about the next phase. She’s thinking about children, which she may have thought of before or not, but in any case, at that time it wasn’t feasible. I realize that it brings back for me a homesickness and an awareness of the disconnect that has taken place. It’s not that I don’t have the people, but I’ve lost the connection with the people. I met this woman, she has a podcast. I don’t know if you know it. We were talking, and when she said “you need to pick a sister,” I immediately thought of you.
Caller: That’s a very nice segue into a conversation. I like that.
Esther: You like it?
Caller: Yeah, it’s fun.
Esther: Alright. And then what would follow? Take it from here.
Caller: I think initially, if we’re just talking about reconnecting with my family, I think I want to be a little better at having conversations that have more meaning to them than just a blank. The thing that I want to be able to share much more are my raw emotions and thoughts. Because most of the conversations that I have with my family, as I say, go like, “oh, how’s the business?”
Esther: No, no, no. We’re talking with her right now. You’re right in there. We’ve just opened it up. Go ahead. This is our role play.
Caller: So if I was telling her something about what’s currently going on, I can tell her a little bit about how I am still unsure about actually taking the next step once I finish my degree. I’m afraid of moving again. And I’m afraid of this shift that is happening in me and this potential life-changing idea of having a kid and changing the way that I’ve perceived myself for a long time and doing this in this relationship and everything that is associated with having a family. Right now, I feel very confused about how I can even consider the idea of having a kid when in the past I have dismissed it so easily.
Esther: What have I dismissed? How I felt lost?
Caller: No, in the past I’ve just dismissed the idea of having a family. Even if I was alone it was very easy to brush aside.
Esther: Yes, because in the past I made sure to completely live in the present. If I didn’t have to think about the future, then I didn’t have to think about big decisions. Then I didn’t have to ask myself “where now, what for?” And I didn’t have to ask “how can I belong somewhere but be anywhere.” So children force us to think about the future, and you’ve lived a life in which you hopped places and you tried to make it painless, when in fact it was sometimes painful. Your family may think you’re the lucky boy who is traveling the globe and who’s having a wonderful opportunity to be in an academic career. They think of it as the glamour side. And you’re about to tell them that there’s a glamour side to it. It’s beautiful. You’ve had fantastic experiences, but you’ve also shed parts of you in every place you’ve been, and you’ve lost a chunk inside and with them.
Caller: That’s undeniably true. I constantly think of…
Esther: Just take it in first. Take it in, just sit with this for a minute. Where do you feel it?
Caller: I feel confused. I feel emotionally confused because some of these feelings or thoughts have perhaps gone through my mind and I’ve been able to dismiss them and they’ve just kind of bounced off and I’ve been able to keep going. I think this conversation really puts a spotlight on them,
Esther: That’s what you came for. Because you know part of why you hadn’t thought about it is because you made sure not to. Because kids means future. Kids means connections, community, one way to be thinking about family. And you were too much tossed in the moment. And I could even imagine you telling your sister, “I miss having deeper conversations. In order to live the life I’ve lived, I’ve had to keep myself a little bit on the surface.”
Caller: I think that’s a wonderful way of putting it actually.
Esther: Say it in your own words.
Caller: I guess in every phone call and in every conversation that I’ve had or that we’ve had at a distance, we’ve really said nothing. We’ve shared very little of actual substance. So we say a lot of words without a lot of meaning.
Esther: Right, and how come? Why do you think they do that?
Caller: I think with time, my sister has been trying to make much more of an effort herself. I think I can put the blame on myself in that I have been busy with work and I let my connections kind of fall through. But also it’s difficult to tell people, or for me it is, to tell people what I’m experiencing emotionally through just a phone call …
Esther: You just did it.
Caller: Yes, yes, I suppose it’s maybe with recurrent patterns or after doing a behavior a lot of times they get cemented in a certain way. So we’re having this conversation and we don’t have to break any old preconceived norms. With my family, with everybody who I’ve known my whole life, there’s these unwritten rules that at least I have thought about for how the interactions are supposed to go. So challenging them is sometimes hard. Sometimes I don’t actually even know that they’re there.
Esther: And now you can put the blame on me.
Caller: Yeah, no, that’s fair. I think starting with my sister, I can try to challenge the rules that I’ve made for myself, and also f take control again over my view on social networks and support networks from my family side.
Esther: Yes, but it’s also on your own evasiveness. It’s to challenge your own aloofness or evasiveness, your own “I’m just going to keep myself superficial so that I don’t have to deal with loss and with sadness and with pain and with difficult questions about the future. I’ve taken care of myself in a certain way, but that way has been useful at times and has made me pay a price as well.”
Who would be number two?
Caller: Immediately it jumps to my mother, who is also, personality-wise, very similar to my sister. She’s quite empathetic. So she is within her generation, she is constantly the one who’s trying to keep connections going and help with organizing events so that all of the members of her generation can meet. have also done a bad job at having deep meaningful conversations with her, at least through the phone. I try to have them when I’m in person, but being that I’m not always there, it’s tough.
Esther: So give me an example of a question she asks and how you go surface.
Caller: So she could ask me about how my work is going, or how it’s going with the relationship with my boss, who I don’t have the best relationship with. And I will simply say, “oh, it’s okay, I’ve just been busy. I had to work on Saturday and Sunday as well, so I’m just tired, it’s okay.” And I’ll leave it somewhere where she knows that physically I am alive, that I am feeding myself, that I am sleeping, that I’m okay, but I don’t really expand further on how the relationship with my boss brings up imposter syndrome, or how I feel a lot of fear about the next move in my life. I’d never really bring those things up.
Esther: Okay, tell me now. You speak Spanish to her?
Caller: I do, yes.
Esther: Alright, say it to me in Spanish. In the language you would speak to her. Como te va el trabajo?
Caller: [in Spanish] I’m very little motivated I don’t see any benefit that I make more efforts in my lab because my boss won’t help me to make that a success. The only thing that keeps me calm and happy is that I will be able to leave soon although I’m not sure what my next step will be, I still don’t know what I’m going to do.
Esther: [in Spanish] It must be very difficult. Because you have always had a very clear direction. And this time you don’t know where you’re going. It must be very difficult.
Caller: [in Spanish] Yes. It’s complicated because it’s the end of the academic road. From here on, it’s an unknown world. I don’t know where I’m going to jump to. There are no more titles to get.
Esther: [in Spanish] I don’t know much about this, so I can’t give you any answers. But I want you to know that you’re not alone. That we support you. That we think of you.
Caller: Muchas gracias.
Esther: This is just the first step, right? Where you tell her things are not glorious. And it’s not just facts that I want to tell you, but I want to tell you the questions and the doubts and the fears that this brings up for me. What does it mean to suddenly wonder about being an imposter, to have a boss that doesn’t believe in me? And then to have her say, “I believe in you. I’m there for you. I don’t know anything about the questions you have to figure out. But I’m an empathic witness.”
So sometimes we don’t help people by telling them what to do because we don’t know, but we tell people and we help them by telling them, “I’m here while you figure it out.” And when you ask me about the conversation about kids, I don’t know that the conversation is as much about having children or not as the fact that you feel like your life has been upended. And you don’t know where it’s taking you. And you feel like you can barely find the answers for yourself. And so how can I think about somebody else?
Caller: That’s a very good point. It’s a very big component of it.
Esther: The fact that you haven’t thought about kids till now, that’s okay. You were a student. And your girlfriend, she’s coming to the end of her postdoc, and so for her, it’s “I’m done being a student, and I’m ready to become a mom.” There’s going to be a bit of a timing glitch. You may not figure all of these things out before you both decide because she doesn’t have all the time in the world if she wants it done a certain way. So you’re gonna probably have more questions on your plate for a while than less. You’re gonna have the ones about your future and the ones about the other aspects of your future. You’re going to think about two parts of your future at the same time. Until now, you’ve only had to deal with one aspect. But this is such as life done to you.
Caller: In some ways I chose it and in other ways I’ve just been floating on the river of my life and just kind of going with the current.
Esther: Right, so this is a moment where you have to steer. And you’ll steer by beginning to have deeper conversations with your family. Because they will ground you. And then you’ll steer because at some point your boss won’t be your boss and he won’t decide about your whole life. He won’t remain the obsession that is making you question everything. Then you’ll steer because, in your love life, in your relationship with your girlfriend, you’re coming to a crossroads. The same way that you are thinking about you, she knows where you are at and she doesn’t want to derail you either. At the same time, there’s something that she wants, which is new in the relationship and which she wants to know whether you will be participating in. You have a plan?
Caller: I very much do. I will talk to her after we’re done and just ask her the next time that we can call, that she has a little bit of emotional bandwidth and time to sit and discuss, I think. I have a variety of questions to just ask her and see what she says.
Esther: Beautiful. And just listen, you don’t have to solve the problem when you’re just trying to explore what it’s made of. So that’s just a moment. We only have one conversation. We’ve been here less than an hour, and we can’t touch on everything. But I just wanted you to have a little bit of a redirecting.
Caller: I appreciate it. This is precisely what the kind of conversations that I wanted to have. I didn’t really know who else I could have a conversation with that could guide me just in how to proceed and how to think in a different way. Because perhaps sometimes in my analytical mind, I think that there’s one path, one way, or that we just tackle a problem, we solve it and we move on. But that’s not always the way. I know that.
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