Year: 2012

New focus for Childless by Marriage book

Sue Fagalde Lick Alzheimer's Disease, caregiving spouse without children, Childless by Marriage book, My Imaginary Daughter, Still Crazy, widow without children

As many of you know, I have been working on a book called Childless by Marriage for several years. At least four times, I have considered the manuscript finished. So far, no big publisher has accepted it, but it keeps coming close, and I have hope that that will be accepted this year. One way or another, it is going to be published.

I was out of town on a book-selling trip last November when, as I sank into a well-earned hot bath, I had a sudden realization that changed the focus of the book. I jumped out and typed for the next three hours in my bathrobe. All this time, I have been trying to leave out the fact that my husband Fred had Alzheimer’s Disease, that he spent two years in a nursing home, and that he died in April, 2011. I didn’t want to bum people out, it didn’t seem like part of the book, and, until April, I didn’t know when it would end.

But I realized in November that Fred’s illness is an important part of the story. I can’t hide it from my readers. I wound up caring for him as if he were my child. And, because we had no children together, I did it alone. Now, as a widow, it makes a huge difference that I don’t have grown children and grandchildren to turn to for help and for company.

So now the focus is more on my connection with Fred, the love that led me to give up children in order to have him, and the cruel turn that left me without either one. In essence, I chose Fred, and this is what happened. What do you think?

******

A piece of good news: An excerpt from the book, a chapter called “My Imaginary Daughter,” appears in the January issue of Still Crazy, a terrific literary magazine. Click here for info.

Can you forgive him or her for not giving you children?

Sue Fagalde Lick childlessness and forgiveness, coping with childlessness, husbands who don't want children, wives who don't want children

Last week, one of my readers asked if I had written about forgiveness. It’s key to moving on past a lack of children, she said. I had not, but I think we should talk about it.

In a marriage where one partner can’t or doesn’t want to have children and the other one does, somebody is not going to get what they want. There’s just no way around it. Either you split up and look for someone who feels the same way, or one of you gives in. The person who didn’t really want kids agrees to have them anyway or the one did want them remains childless. It’s a painful situation. Do you love the other person enough to make this kind of sacrifice? And if you do, is part of you going to hate them forever or can you forgive them?

I was married twice. Husband number one let me know a couple years into the marriage that he did not want children, couldn’t stand babies and would leave me if I had one. Would he really have done that? I don’t know. After six years, we divorced. Looking back, I know that he was not an evil person. He was just young. He was not ready to be a father, even if I felt completely ready to have a baby. Should I hate him? No. It just wasn’t meant to be.

Then came Fred, husband number two. When we got married, he was 48 years old. His kids were 18, 16, and 8. He and his first wife had spent years raising them, and now freedom was in sight. He didn’t want to start over with another baby. In fact, he had had a vasectomy to make sure he and his ex wouldn’t conceive again. I know that he loved me enough that if I had insisted on having a child, he would have agreed to seek a way to make me pregnant, but I didn’t insist. I just ran around feeling sorry for myself. I can understand all that now, and I can forgive him. He didn’t give me children of my own but he gave me so many other things.

I’m still working on forgiving myself.

If you’re in the throes of unfulfilled baby lust, it isn’t easy to forgive anyone or anything who denies you a child. But try, just for a minute, to see things from their perspective. Maybe you can’t forgive them yet. Maybe you can’t live with this and need to find another mate or another way to deal with the situation. But try to see things from their side. What makes them feel the way they do? Understanding is the first step toward finding a solution you both can live with.

So, in this new year, however it turns out, whatever you have to do, try a little forgiveness.