Crosspost "Having a child has made me profoundly unhappy" from /r/Parenting:

Sorry for this very lomg and at times probably kind of incoherent post.

TLDR: I hate being a parent.

I have been together with my partner for about 12 years now (both late 30s). In the beginning and for the first years after that, we were very much in love and not just in a romantic relationship but best friends. We are/were a perfect fit.

Then we had a child 7 years ago, which changed a lot for me. I had pretty bad PPD (post partum depression) for abput 8 months (got antidepressants that helped a lot). My libido is very, very low ever since. I never realized how much time alone I need to recharge (because I could just take the time whenever I needed it) until I had a child and suddenly had almost no alone time anymore. I never realized how while I love taking care of and organize things, how much I hate taking care of people and have people rely on me. I never was a very physically affectionate person (sex was ok, but I never really liked to cuddle) but that also wasn't a problem before. I never realized that having a child meant so much physical contact with another person (the child), so I feel I don't really have any physical contact left to give to my partner. I never realized that having a child meant so much negative conversation (don't do that, don't do this, no candy before bad, no I am not bying this, etc.), so many exhausting repetitions, much which is very emotially draining. I never realized how litte I enjoy doing "kids stuff". Before having children, I really enjoyed spending (limited) time with them in general. But having kids around 24/7 changed this completely. Most child activities - to me - are inane and bore me out of my mind, even things that I normally enjoy when doing them myself (e.g. baking) loose most of their appeal when doing them with children, because you always have to hold back, make things easier and less complex, explain 10.000 things and the result is never as good.

While our child is generally nice, he is very high energy and doesn't like to do things by himself (he is very social). He asks questions non stop and has a hard time accepting no for an answer (and even though we almost never cave in, it did not lead to any learning experience that asking 20 times for candy doesn't end up in him getting candy, but in very stressed and annoyed parents). In the evenings, we are often very exhausted and don't have the energy to do much besides watching some episodes on netflix, often don't even together.

I really, really regret to have made the decision to become a parent. I feel trapped in the parent role, I feel like it fu**ed up my mental health and my relationship with my partner. My life doesn't belong to myself anymore. I envy the people that separated from their partners they had children with and have now new relationships but the child(ren) are only with them every other week, so they have 50% of their time child free and can live their live and have time as a couple. But I don't want to separate from my partner, if anything, I would like to have more time only with him but less time with my child. But that is not possible, hence feeling trapped. On top, even though I don't like being a parent, I don't hate my child, and seing the direction into which the world is heading I get depressed thinking about what a crappy future he will have to look forward to.

Whenever I want to spend time with my partner, I have to buy this time either with money for a babysitter or, when leaving the child with friends, my time when I in turn take my friends kids at a later time to balance things out. Which is a shitty situation. Both our parents wouldn't mind watching him, but live a day of travelling away so they cannot take him very often.

As you can imagine, Covid lockdowns did not help. I was so relieved when I could go back to the office and not being trapped in my "nuclear family prison" all day long.

Whenever I talked about my issues with parenthood with other people whose children are already older, they always say things like "I know its hard, but it will get better when he's older." I am sorry, but "your life is sh*t but eventually it will get better" is a very bleak outlook and not at all what I wished for myself to ever be in. By now I think that people who tell you that children fulfill you are either liars that want to lure you into their shitty situation by telling you that having children will be fun. Or their brains are just so full of hormones telling them that is is rewarding so they don't mind. My brain never did.

Posted by onkel-enzo | 12 August 2022 | Link