Dear Carolyn: I increasingly feel like my life is on hold until my wife and I decide, finally, whether to have a third baby.
We always wanted two children; we have two boys who are in elementary school. I considered us finished, but my wife dealt with some disappointment about not having a girl. I would have liked a girl, too, but didn’t feel as strongly about it. Sometimes her sadness has seemed really intense, such as when friends welcome baby girls.
A couple of years ago, she opened a conversation about possibly having a third baby. I reminded her of all the reasons we initially decided to stop at two, which are still in play. But I did not close the door.
Now I regret not doing so because we’ve been locked into indecision since then. We want to buy a new house, but she won’t commit until we settle this question. Same thing with upgrading our cars and getting rid of our old baby gear. We can’t take a family vacation to Disney World yet because then there’s a possibility our future child would have missed it.
I don’t want to just slam my foot down and close this issue because it makes her so sad when I do. But is there a way to keep our lives moving forward until the decision is eventually made?
— On Hold
On Hold: This limbo problem isn’t just snagging the house and Disney. It’s so much bigger than that: Two little boys are going through life as disappointments to their mother. You don’t say as much, and I’m not saying it to rip into your wife, but it’s there.
Right? It’s an Alfred Hitchcock gut punch, where you never see the fist, the gut or the ghost of the little girl, but everyone leaves in pain. Sorry for the dusty cultural reference.
We advice columnists take flak for “always” recommending therapy. Okay, it’s me, I do. But this is such a question for therapy that I’m devoting my answer to why you two need to go. (Snow day for haters — you can skip to something else.)
Your wife’s grief for the daughter she doesn’t have is keeping her heart, her emotional center of gravity, outside your home and with this other-possible-maybe-future-my-little-girl third child. Who may be another boy, by the way.
And if it’s a girl, will the boys ever get even her distracted attention again?
Her grief is significant and may have needed its own therapeutic work even if you had “close[d] the door” — so that’s another bit of advice there: Let yourself off the hook.
Something else about her attachment to the idea of a girl, which I’ll type to you but she will have to come to herself (ergo, therapy again): An actual baby girl would have been herself, always — never what your wife imagined she would be.
So your wife could have, would have, had her heart broken regardless, for wanting so badly or envisioning so clearly something that was never in her control. And she could have broken her daughter’s heart, too, over and over, if she didn’t accept her for who she was — or, worse, resented her for not being as craved. Fixating on a girl was always the problem, not the failure to have one.
The greatest gift we can give children is our openness to them. To let them erase what we foolishly thought we wanted.
So, therapy. For your wife’s grief, but for everyone’s sake. When managed, it won’t hold her back from the family — the life — she’s got.
