How to Get over What You'll Never Have

[ENKELI]

I couldn't find an existing thread so apologies if this is repeated. 

All my life I wanted marriage and kids.

I'm now too old to have children and no one I meets wants to consider dating me much less marrying me.

I cry every day about how my heart is shattered because I was never give the chance of marriage and family.

And then society adds to my pain and tells me I'm incomplete because I have no children.

How do I get past thus? It's not like I can hope for it in the future. 

I don't see any purpose in living most days because I have nothing to offer. Except I don't even have the guts to do myself in.

I hate myself and my life.

[Walkoneggshells]

Hi Enkeli, sorry you are going through such a hard time. I just want to say that there is a way ford and life is not only about your family. You get back from your life what you put into it.i have been in a similar position to where you are. I hated my self and just wanted life to end. After a lot of therapy I learned that if you don’t have a family of your own join another one. Life is also about the friends we make and relationships we gain. Family and relationships are a lot of work and may require a lot of searching, but it is worth it in the end. I have also learned that there are different ways of looking at the world. Looking through depression and negativity are not helpful and keep you down and that is self defeating. Life is a journey and you have to put energy into it to get something out. My saying is if someone does not have a smile give them yours. I know you have a hard road ahead but talking about it does help so keep reaching out.

[creative_writer]

@ENKELI I honestly don't think it is ever too late to get married, sometimes you do hear about people getting married when they are older. Sometimes people find their soulmate when they are older, the universe has its ways. While, it is true as females we have a biological clock, the option for adoption is always there if you can't have your own kids. What I am saying is, if you're meant to get married, you will. If you are going to have a child (whether biological or adopted) you will.

Maybe right now it is about forming connections with others, which you can done through joining groups or even volunteering. There are many avenues to meet people. Sending you lots of hugs ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

[Ru-bee]

Hi @ENKELI 

It is so hard to feel that the life you've always wanted isn't achievable. It's understandable that this would cause a lot of distress and take time to process and grieve this life that you had imagined for yourself. 

We never really know what path our lives are going to take, we can hope and we can plan, but even then we can never have any assurance that things will work out the way we want it to. 

I wonder if it could be helpful to think about the underlying reasons why being married and being a mother is so important to you, what values and needs would this fulfil for you? And then explore whether they could be achieved through other avenues. For example, if companionship and love is at the heart of that, consider if you could feel this with close friendships, as @Walkoneggshells mentioned. If you have a need to nurture then there is always adoption, but also fostering, or mentoring young people, getting involved in your community where you can still help shape a young person's life and provide care and nurturing. It might not be exactly what you had planned but that doesn't mean that it can't be as meaningful as the life you wanted, just different.

[Former-Member]

@ENKELI I'm sorry to hear you are upset and experiencing a sense of profound loss.

A backstory of my life: I never married or had children either.  I am ok about it however. I have lived with chronic fatigue syndrome and would have passed it onto a baby. I also was on a psych med that caused spina bifida in babies. My ex turned out to be not a good man and there was no money to raise a family.  My life had been extremely difficult and I would have neglected a child owing to illness.

In this case I had to think of the rights of a child. I think the children of today have more illnesses and the chances of having an autistic child is at an all-time high. I would never had the money to meet medical bills. This can put a strain on relationships and leave spouses living a life of desperation behind four walls not getting any support from social welfare

I've had micro aggressions coming from people regarding my celibacy and childlessness but that does not make me a cold and heartless person. I love children. I don't think I would have been a good parent however. I'm too soft and not a disciplinarian.  I've also seen lots of parenting disasters - children of mentally ill going up for adoption and foster care or being looked after by their grandparents.

I think looking back I made the correct decision. Recently have seen one friends MI daughter-in-law have an autistic kid which the partner took custody of, the next door neighbor with bipolar having the grandparents raise the child and just seeing the local kids in my poor neighborhood looking pasty and ill.

I think this context has helped me make peace with my decision. I have not had many offers of romance but most of the relationships you can see through the sexual politicking and the true nature of what lies underneath the surface.  If you are disabled its also a high incidence of attracting relationship violence.

Governments around the world also want us to have less children as we are overpopulated as a planet and we are now seeing celebrity childless couples not having children due to "environmental reasons".

I know this is upsetting to you though as you are at a stage of life looking back on what could have been. Maybe try to look into it in context as I have and try and see that it may have been a blessing in disguise. You dont know if a marriage or kids would have worked out for you in the end. So many things can and do go wrong

So I think I've done my bit avoiding a potential catastrophe 

[MJG017]

Hi @ENKELI It's hard to have wanted children so much but get to that point in your life where you know it's never going to happen.  For me, it was for medical reasons, but also age with not feeling I had the energy to do it, even it it was still possible.  It's a very big hole in our lives to fill, but we do have to try and fill it somehow.  Some people become foster carers, or work in childcare for example.  My sister became a neonatal nurse so she could work with babies because she never got to have any of her own.  This doesn't mean you have to fill this gap with children, it's about finding something in life to make us feel more like we have worth.

So try not to feel too much like you are incomplete because you have no children.  Certainly don't let other people make you feel that way.  Like I said we just need to find other purposes in life and hopefully find some good people to share that life with, whether that is friends or family.

I've had one relationship in my life.  That is the only relationship in my life that I would even describe as remotely close.  And this was someone I met at 43 years old.  It's never too late, and as I've said before, it only needs to work once.  You only need to find that one person who will accepts us and love us.  Maybe this person will have their own family you can be a part of, even if it is just your partner's family, it still brings a feeling of connection.  So try not to feel life is always going to be like this for you, it can change very quickly when you meet the right person.  And that is always possible, unless we bury ourselves away so deeply that no one ever finds us.  I was like this for many, many years.

I've talked about this before somewhere here but for me, it started with just reaching out to people who understood me and through that gained enough confidence to at least start to doubt those negative feelings I had about myself for so long.  I started to see that there were people out there who made me feel like I was someone worth knowing and that I was likeable and a person with a lot of good attributes that were worth sharing.

You said "It's not like I can hope for it in the future." But I would challenge that and ask why makes you so sure?  I know you would probably answer in the same way that i would have for all those many years, in that "It always been this way, so it will never change.".  I was convinced for so long... decades.  But it can.  Like I said, I've only ever met one person in my life that wanted to be with me, and I'm still with her 11 years later.  It just takes one chance meeting and a bit of willingness to keep facing those negative feelings by not completely killing off that hope.  So please, just don't loose that hope... it doesn't need to be much.

[Bow]

Hi @ENKELI 

your post really resonated with me and just wanted you to know that I see and hear you. What you are feeling, what you are going through sucks and it’s not fair. It’s perfectly ok to grieve what you don’t have, to grieve what you wished for but never got. 

I too grew up wanting marriage and kids and I never thought I would get it, especially when all my friends around me were getting married and having kids. It hurt every time someone else married. It hurt when someone else had another child. It really hurt. It was so hard to be happy for them. 

and while I did end up getting married in my mid 30’s and I did end up having one child (I had ovarian cancer in my 20’s and I never knew if I’d be able to have children), it all fell apart for me and I’m not divorced and raising my daughter mostly on my own.  And yes I am so thankful I have my daughter, my life is not what I wished and dreamed of. I grieve that a lot. It was super hard in those early days, the grief I felt it a lot. And while I still have my days, I still grieve, I try to make the most of what I have got. There are some good things about being on my own…. I try to remember those things. 

I don’t wanna say just be grateful for what you have got, that’s heaps insensitive and I would wanna punch whoever said that to me in the face. Allow yourself to grieve though. And take as long as you need. But also live. 

[Ainjoule]

Hey @ENKELI 

It looks like a lot of people relate to your post, including me. I have never been married and I tried to have a child on my own (including fertility treatment) but I was unable to conceive. I had a long period in my early 40's where I let myself grieve for this loss. Largely since then I have built my life around other things, but you are right it wasn't easy. I now study and do volunteer work. It doesn't always fill the gap but it does help. I wanted to say now I have gotten to a point where I almost find the lack of responsibility liberating, but it took a lot to get here. Give yourself some time and space to grieve and then start to think about what other things might give you meaning in your life. We talk a lot in DBT about building a life worth living. There have been points where I thought that not only did I have nothing to offer, I didn't even have anything to say, quite literally - but slowly I have built up a life worth living. I now reflect on that time and realise how depressed I was. I hope that you are able to work through your feelings and come out the other side feeling better. I can't quite express how much empathy I have for your situation because goodness knows I have been there.   

[ENKELI]

Thanks for your responses. It's one thing to have chosen not to have children and to not have been given the choice.

I know I would have been a good parent.

My parents divorced in the 70's when  it was still not the done thing. I grew up being hated by my friends' parents because of being the child of divorce. I also grew up going without the basic things - new shoes, clothes, food. But I had the best damned childhood regardless because I had a loving family. 

I have worked with children/young adults on the spectrum - from age 12 to 22 so that doesn't bother me. More children are born healthy than not so the unfounded fear that "maybe" a kid might be born with some condition never bothered me.

Backstory - I co-parented 2 children from the ages of 4 and 6 to 14 & 16. I supported these 2 children financially, emotionally and spiritually. When they turned 14 & 16 their mother who was my best friend and who I would lay my life on the line for literally ripped my life apart by taking these kids away from me without reason, aside from that I was no longer useful financially. This happened April 2023.

So the suggestion of meeting people with kids gives me an almost traumatic response.

It also tells me that I am useful as a bank account and baby sitter, after that get lost.

I grieve these kids as if they had died. Except I know they are still living their lives without me, not caring what has happened to me (yes I have been told this).

It's like a f*ck you twice - you don't deserve your own kids and just when you think your prayers have been answered and you will get to help 2 children grow, those kids are going to be taken away from you as well.

Can I do it again? Care for someone elses' kids? No

I gave up volunteering after doing it for 25 years because I was burnt out.

I don't have any friends to catch up with and that is no doubt my fault too.

I just want something good to finally happen because waking up dreading still being alive sucks.😓

[rav3n]

hey @ENKELI i'm so sorry to hear about the way you were treated by your friend, i can't even imagine how painful it must be to have those kids taken away from you - you did NOT deserve to be treated in that way at all. i know you've been told that those kids don't care, but knowing their age, it might take them some time to realise and appreciate all that you've done for them (even for me, i was around 21 when i finally started to acknowledge all that my mum's done for me). 

please know that this experience and the way you were treated do not reflect on your ability to be a parent. you were a parent to them, and you were more than just a financial support - you supported those kids emotionally and in many other aspects - and it really sucks that you didn't get that validation, but i hope you know that you are parental figure to them, regardless of what others say. it's totally okay for you to grieve losing them, you are allowed to feel that loss. please do take your time to process these feelings, and take things one step at a time.
also, wanted to suggest giving Griefline a call, might a great place to talk through the grief you're feeling.

good things will come your way @ENKELI  you are so worthy and deserving of good, beautiful things in life. we're sitting with you 💗