116. Keltie Maguire on Advice for Couples at Odds About the Kids or Childfree Choice

Okay, so first of all, as I said already, this does not need to mean that you will break up.

Yes, this is difficult.

Yes, it is painful.

Navigating this with a partner who is willing to navigate that, and we're going to talk about this in a second, but if you and your partner both say, hey, we want to figure this out, we want to figure out what is best for us jointly and as individuals, which sometimes is not the same thing, but if you're willing to work together on this, you can come to a decision that will work for both of you.

But it's going to take some work and it's going to take a commitment from both people.

This is really important.

I sometimes have people come to me, men and women, who are at odds with their partner and yet their partner is effectively not willing to discuss this.

They're not really open to communicating.

They're kind of like, well, this is what I want, take it or leave it.

And it is going to be really hard to find a way forward if the two of you are not doing this together.

Now, I will say that when it comes to whether or not you can see this period of time, this indecision between the two of you or this conflict between the two of you, whether you can see it through successfully, i.e., in terms of the success of the relationship, I should clarify.

Some of that comes down to how different are your feelings on this matter.

Now, if one person is like, absolutely, 100%, having kids is like my life goal, vision, dream, it's all I ever have wanted, and the other person says, absolutely not, that seems like the worst thing ever, I definitely want to stay child-free, that is admittedly going to be the most difficult scenario to navigate through.

Not totally impossible, but, like, it's definitely up there with, like, ooh, where do we go from here? Because at the end of the day, someone is going to have to bend or compromise.

Ideally, both of you.

We're going to talk about compromise in a second.

But, you know, you're going to have to be giving things up.

And in any relationship, there's, of course, compromise.

There is giving things up.

There are tradeoffs.

But when you have really strong feelings at opposite ends of this decision, that's probably the toughest position to be in.

And I'm going to highly, highly suggest that you get support from a professional, a coach such as myself, a relationship therapist, someone to help guide you through this because it can be pretty sticky and heavy to navigate on your own.

As I mentioned, it's also about the willingness or the openness that your partner and you have to figure this out.

And part of that is going to be figuring out, like, what is the highest priority here? How much are we willing to uphold and protect our relationship, even if it means perhaps giving up part of or all of what we want when it comes to this decision? So if you've got two people who are at opposite ends of the spectrum, but both of them are like, you know what? We want to figure this out.

Our relationship is what is ultimately most important to us.