Bit of background…
I was in a relationship with a girl for 2 years, which ended 6 months ago. Having not had much success in this department, this was my first proper relationship and, as you might imagine, I was absolutely smitten. So much so that I missed several glaring red flags – which, to this day, I’m not sure if it was down to lack of experience or just being so grateful to finally have a girlfriend that I ignored them – the primary of which being her literal obsession with all things related to babies, including a constant (and aloud) yearning for when she might become a mother herself.
This all began when we were first talking, and she asked if I had considered whether I might one day want children. Truth be told, I hadn’t really considered it either way, but in the interests of not upsetting the apple cart, I gave a non-committal answer saying I’d potentially be open to in the future. She was delighted with this answer, saying that ‘no kids’ would be a deal-breaker for her.
Fast forward to one month into our relationship and we have the first of a reoccurring series of arguments related to how I’m not matching her insatiable enthusiasm for having kids. Bear in mind that she’s in painful amounts of debt (which she is given £1,500 by me to help manage) from over-spending on her ex-boyfriend’s child in her previous relationship, meaning we’re both living with parents and have no way of currently getting our own place. Not that I’d be wanting to invest in property with a 1-month girlfriend, but just to set the scene. She wants me to commit to a definitive timeline on when we will have children, some time in the next couple of years but preferably less.
It was at this point I should have ended things and moved on but, due to the aforementioned failure to identify a red flag when it’s planted firmly in front of me, we persist. As things move on, our sex life becomes more and more non-existent due to her increasing insistence that we plan to have babies soon and the fact that she refuses to allow sex while I’m wearing a condom. She takes birth control full-time to help with period pains – something I was religious in ensuring she took – but the sensible part of my mind takes over that, given she’s gradually revealed that she is anti-abortion, sex is no longer worth a potential unwanted pregnancy (well, unwanted by one of us anyway).
In the end, after innumerable arguments for which the root cause was the disagreement regarding having babies, we decide to end our relationship.
Fast-forward to now and I’m finally getting back out there and going out drinking/partying with friends and family. I’ve been shown interest and even propositioned a few times by attractive women, but I can’t bring myself to follow through. I’m very much emotionally unavailable, but I am interested in having physical relations with women – something I missed out on for the final 6 months of my previous relationship. I’m just utterly terrified by the prospect of getting someone pregnant – either through a failure in the condom or them tampering with it somehow – and having absolutely no recourse for this.
Can anyone else relate? Was there anything that helped you get over this?