Are We Ready to Become Parents? - [The Courtship Series #13]

Transcript

Hey, sweetheart, I'm home. You look, uh, pensive. Anything on your mind? My day was fine.

Standard work day, nothing really exciting to report. Honestly, what about you? You feeling blue? Why don't you talk to me about it? Baby, how many times do I have to explain this to you? It's not a problem for me.

I like to hear your thoughts. If something's on your mind, I want to understand it. So, tell me, what's my girl been thinking about today? Oh, good, I'm glad you were able to talk to him.

Yeah, I love it when you talk to your friends. Look, I may be the most important part of your social life, but I don't want to be the only part of it. That's not healthy.

I want you and your friends to be able to chat and grow your relationships. I came to be part of your life, not take your life away from you. So, uh, what'd they say that got y'all bugged? Maybe it's clear that it's bothering you.

Yeah, yeah, I know. She, uh, she got pregnant pretty quick, didn't she? Is that what's on your mind? Okay, okay, okay, hold up, hold up.

I, I think I know where you're going with this. Sounds to me like, you know, ever since we got married, people, well, you know, when you're dating, everybody asks, oh, when are you going to get married? And then as soon as you get married, it's when are you going to have a kid, right? And with some of your friends already having gotten pregnant, had kids, you and I have been married, you know, five minutes.

And so it's, uh, it's pretty predictable that some, some folks are going to be asking you when you're going to start having kids of your own, right? Well, um, how are you feeling about that? No, I don't, I don't mean about having kids.

I mean about people's expectations, people's questions. How are you feeling about that? About the pressure? Yeah, I bet it can be pretty rough.

No, I don't think that men get that quite as much as women do. Um, our friends don't typically ask, you know. I mean, there's, yeah, they'll ask like, so you guys planning to have kids, that sort of thing? Or when do you think kids are going to start coming along? But not in a way that, I don't know, it, maybe it's just that it affects you differently than it affects me.

It doesn't make me feel pressure. You know, it's more just small talk. But I could, I could see, and that doesn't mean I'm saying that you're wrong.

It doesn't mean that I think you're nuts for feeling the way you do. It's just that we're wired differently. I think what you're feeling is very understandable, even if I don't feel the same thing.

So tell me, that pressure, how's it affecting you? Mm-hmm. And are you feeling that just from friends, from family, or acquaintances, people that you know casually?

Yeah. And what are your thoughts about when you might want to start growing our family? Sure.

Okay, well, let me stop you right there for just a moment, okay? First thing that I want you to understand is I'm not pressuring you. We're partners.

And your job is not to do things the way that I want them to be done. It's not to bend your will to match mine. Your job is the same as mine, and that is to be flexible and a good partner and work together to figure out what's right for us, you know?

That's what I expect of you, and it's fair for you to expect that of me. So let's go back to what we talked about, you know, when we were dating. First off, I think it was a very good, very, very, very good conversation that we decided to have when we were dating about whether or not we were going to have kids.

I know it wasn't comfortable to bring up, but, you know, there's so many people that get married and one of them wants kids and one of them doesn't, and they both think that the other will change. And it ends marriages. Or it results in one partner getting what they want and the other one being bitter.

So you know, it was really uncomfortable to have that discussion because depending on how it went, it could have ended the relationship between us right then and there, but that's the right thing to do, rather than live unhappily and then end it down the road anyway. So very glad we got that out of the way. And what did we discuss about that? Right, we both want kids, and when? When do we want them? Exactly, when we're ready.

And I know that's vague, but that's the truth. We don't have to have a schedule. We don't have to have a timeline.

We're not meeting some external set of obligations. We don't have to meet anyone's calendar, you understand? We get to determine our own timeline here, what's right for us.

And what makes it right for us? We'll have kids when we're emotionally prepared for it, individually and as a couple. We'll have kids when we're financially ready.

We'll have kids when we're socially ready, meaning that we are prepared for the changes that that's going to bring to our life and to our relationship. How will it affect our relationship? Kids? Well, I have, I've read that a baby is nothing more than a GI tract with a voracious appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.

Facetious, yes, but it is true. The point is, they are tiny. ..