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Dear Prudence,
My wife “Claire” and I (both women) are planning our first child. I will be the one carrying the baby due to a history of genetic disease in Claire’s family. We are having a disagreement about choosing a sperm donor. I want my closest male friend, “Luke,” to be the donor. Claire wants to use a sperm bank.
I think Claire’s objections stem mainly from how I met Luke. He is the only man I have ever had sex with, when we briefly dated in high school. I quickly realized I am extremely gay, and Luke supported me in coming out and has been among my best friends ever since. Claire is polite but not friendly to Luke, and seems to have some issues with our friendship. When I hang out with him, she’s constantly texting to ask what I’m doing.
I’m very much the social butterfly type, while Claire doesn’t have a huge social life outside our relationship. She said she doesn’t want someone else to have a “claim” on our child. I’m an only child and Claire is estranged from her conservative family, so I think having Luke in our child’s life as a “fun uncle” type figure would be beneficial. (I should also mention that we live in a state that recognizes second-parent adoption and Luke said he would sign a donor agreement and respect whatever boundaries we wish. He also works in a field that involves near-constant travel, so it’s not like he’d be some overbearing presence.)
Ultimately, I’d rather have my child’s biological father be someone I know and love rather than a stranger who masturbates into a jar for money. Since I’m the one who has to be pregnant for nine months, I feel like it should be my decision, but I don’t want to start off something as important as having a child with a fight. What should I do?
—No Sperm From a Rando
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Jenée Desmond-Harris: Claire wins this one. Sorry! Choosing the biological father of your child is like dating, or trying something on in a dressing room and deciding whether to buy it: Maybe means no. And “I’m not comfortable with this” —from either of the future parents—definitely means no.
This is just not something that you want to push Claire into, and I’m carrying the baby so I should get to decide is not the hill you want to die on. You can have a strong argument to support your position and still end up living in misery for 18-plus years because the reality of the situation, which you can’t debate away, is that Claire won’t be happy.
To be clear, I’d tell her the same: Don’t force your wife to use an anonymous donor if she doesn’t want to.
Lizzie: Yeah. Look, I think those “happy wife, happy life” signs should be thrown out a window, but I can guarantee you that Unhappy Wife Mad About Child’s Parentage is a shitshow waiting to happen. You two are far apart on this. Making an “it’s my body” argument is not going to work out well for your marriage. I know that sucks to hear, but it’s true.
If you are dead set against clinic donor sperm (and “masturbates into a jar for money” tells me you have a lot of feelings about this), is there a way where you can talk about a known donor scenario with someone who is not such a trigger for your wife? Someone you both know and respect and can be as much or little of a presence in your child’s life as you both decide? I say this with a lot of love: Parenting is hard. Birth is hard. Building a nontraditional family comes with even higher barriers. Please try to land in a place where you and your wife agree before setting out on this path.
Jenée: LOL, “masturbates into a jar for money” does indeed say a lot. You’re absolutely right. The “it’s my body” argument is very strong but the part that comes after “it’s my body” is “therefore, I don’t have to get pregnant in a way that doesn’t work for me,” not “therefore, you have to become a parent my way and deal with Luke forever.”
But I want to share the debate I’m having with myself in my head. My first reaction is that the approach to handling disagreement that I see in this letter is a big red flag about the relationship. I’m worried that these two are missing the big things that couples need to be happy: Prioritizing each other’s happiness. Being generous. Letting go of being right all the time. The fact that they each want to strong-arm the other into something troubles me. And it makes me think maybe … don’t bring a kid into this situation.
Then the other part of me says, “That’s not fair, you can’t tell everyone their relationship is shit just because they have a conflict. Half the couples in the world wouldn’t meet your standard.”
But then the first part responds “Well, yeah, but half of all couples get divorced and a lot of the ones who stay together aren’t happy so maybe you’re right and just seeing the signs early.”
So, I don’t know.
Lizzie: Oh, just hit me with a small issue, huh? So, you may well be right. But I also want to share my perspective as someone who is prone to what I think is probably pretty selfish thinking (and has had to work hard to retrain myself). To me, one of the hardest parts of marriage is realizing that someone else may fundamentally disagree with you about something that seems either clear, or not a big deal to you, but is to them. And even if you don’t understand, you have to respect that. Like, I always think I can argue/explain my side!
But it doesn’t work like that. And I think before kids, you can have the long, thorny, “but this is what I really mean, don’t you see?” conversations about your living space, your jobs, etc. But once kids enter the fray, you just have to be willing to accept your partner’s point of view more. Because kids are a no take-backs thing. And this is not to say that couples with children are somehow better or inherently more worthwhile or anything like that. Just that … when you are talking about another person’s actual existence, the stakes are really high. And I think this is a place where the LW really needs to make peace with Claire’s point of view.
Trying to just get her to see that you are, as you say, super gay and nothing about this guy matters more than friendship is not a winning argument. You need to drop it for the sake of your marriage. And learning that lesson—that your wife’s feelings are more important than what you can convince her of—will indeed ensure the rest of your marriage sails on smoother seas. This is a really hard thing to do. It’s a big mental reframe and something I still work on every day. But it is key. Maybe I just repeated exactly what you said, Jenée. But just from the perspective of an “if I can only explain it right” brain.
Jenée: No, you’re right. I would just say she doesn’t have to make peace with Claire’s point of view. But if she can’t make peace with it, she needs to have a child with someone else (perhaps just Luke!).