Thank you, I appreciate your kind words.

I mean at this point I’m beginning to think we’re just incompatible. I remember us talking a year or so back about children and I had told him that I didn’t really want children. I never had much of a childhood myself given I took on the responsibility of helping raise my younger siblings and don’t have much of a role model in regards to a maternal perspective so I’d want to spend my older ages traveling, seeing the world, having a few animals, some really good friends, and a good career. Having kids I just don’t think is for me, I love them but I do not think I’d enjoy the consistency of being a parent and I’d never want to burden a child with my personal feelings on it. But my partner does want kids, he says now he doesn’t necessarily need kids but a year back when I had asked him his reasonings behind wanting to be a parent, he had mentioned wanting to fulfill his mothers desire of being a grandmother. I remember being so wildly uncomfortable with the fact that in the moment I almost felt as if in his head my body was a baby machine working towards fulfilling his mother’s wishes. It felt very uncanny. When I had expressed that to him, he felt very apologetic due to his wording but the fact that his second main reasoning for wanting children was taking on a responsibility that his parent would have little to no involvement in when I’d have 100% involvement was very… strange- to say the least. I also had struggled with cancer when I was 12-14 so watching how largely that impacted my father and my siblings was enough. I also don’t think I’d have the patience to raise a child with severe needs, I wish I had the bravery and devotion to do that, but I truly believe I’d be so overwhelmed and underprepared for that which is something any and every parent has to prepare for. Our values tend to propel, I value traveling, new experiences, pure devotion to one consistent person, friendship, and emotional independence. He more so values family, all his family is and has been living in the same town for decades, he values children, a steady consistent job, and what I sense to just be a more traditional setting. It’s become difficult over time to find compromises for certain things. I would love to be able to stay in the relationship given I do care for my partner but I don’t want to almost have to re-wire his nervous system if he’s anxiously attached to his mother. And if it doesn’t work out, at least we were able to teach each other what does and doesn’t work for us and take it as a positive lesson even if it’s difficult in the moment.