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I am a few years older than my husband. This is a second marriage for both of us, and we have been married 10 years. My two children are almost grown, and his daughter is a teenager who spends every other weekend with us.
Our step-situation has been rocky. My husband gave up on being a parent to my children years ago, though they are basically great kids. He has also had an affair.
He knew when he married me that I couldn’t have any more children because I had a partial hysterectomy when my youngest was a baby. In the past several years, it has hit him hard that he wants more children of his own. I tried hard to get him to think about adoption. I would love to raise a child together with him with no other parent involved.
How can I get my husband to think about adopting more seriously? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I can’t imagine going through another divorce.
Lisa,
Your husband has fathered one child and passed on the opportunity to parent two others. Now he claims he wants the one thing he has always known you can’t give him: Another child. He is not talking about an unfulfilled dream of his, or an opportunity he never had. He has had both.
Like any good magician, he is using misdirection to divert your attention from the real issue. That issue is the same issue which presented itself when he cheated. He thinks he wants another woman, and he thinks he has found a way to get out of your marriage without saying it.
Saying he wants more biological children sounds almost plausible. But what matters most to him is that this well-crafted excuse lets him off the hook and puts the blame on you.
As long as you give credence to his excuse, you are playing into his hands. He has things so well set up that divorce seems like the only possible and logical solution to the problem. You need to call him on it. You need to take away his excuse, because it is not only unsolvable, it is untrue.
Wayne
