Bait and Switch

Looking to the Future wrote in to Dear Margo:

My husband and I are in our late 20s and have been married nearly five years. It’s been a fairly good and happy marriage.

Great.

Before we got married, we agreed that we would move to my home state (a 12-hour drive away) in five or six years, and also that we would have children in that same timeframe. Now that the five-year mark is fast approaching, my husband is getting cold feet. He is happy with the life we have and doesn’t particularly want children - too much responsibility and money and too many obstacles to being able to go out with friends on a whim, etc. He is also now firmly against moving.

He committed fraud. Very rotten of him. Well, I suppose there's a slim chance that he truly wanted those things and, over time, his mind has changed.

When I bring up that he agreed to these things, he says, "But at the time, five years seemed so far away."

Yeah, so did death, but he vowed faithful marriage until then, didn't he?

Even though I’m fairly happy now and I do love him, I feel I will get more sad and depressed with each passing year, and I’m having thoughts that maybe I should leave him now so I have time to move home, find someone else and have children instead of wasting more time.

Yes, leave him now. Maybe he really isn't all that happy with you. If he is happy now, he won't be once you start doing certain things (and not doing others) because you'll be resenting him. Leaving him will free you up to look for a new husband, one who is right for you. There's no guarantee you'll find one. But the husband you have now doesn't seem to be the right one.

Do not try to get him to change his mind, or go ahead and get pregnant. If someone doesn’t really want children, there is no compromise. Now, as Dear Margo pointed out, do a gut check and see if those things are important enough to you to leave what you see as a happy marriage. Do you really want those things? Don't try to convince yourself that you don't if you really do. And if you do really want those things, and he doesn't, then you should leave.

I speak as someone with experience. No, I never married the wrong person. But I did spend years with girlfriends I couldn't marry if I wanted to keep my goals, and there was a time when I was unmarried and did a gut check and asked myself if I really did want to be a husband & father or not. Either he wants children or he doesn't.