I wanted to have kids but my wife didn’t. I chose my relationship over becoming a mom.

The author (not pictured) chose a relationship with her wife over having kids.

Dmytro Betsenko/Getty Images

When we started dating eight years ago, my now-wife said she didn’t want kids. I wanted to have kids, but I chose to put my focus on our relationship and it paid off. We enjoy our childfree marriage and have dogs that we put sweaters on.

When starting a relationship, the topic of kids will come up at some point. And in certain situations, one person isn’t interested in bringing children into their lives. That is exactly what happened with my wife and I.

Eight years ago we started our journey together and the inevitable conversation made its way into our lives. I wanted to have a child, but she didn’t. This could have stagnated our budding romance, but instead, it strengthened it. Here’s how we made it work then and continue to make it work.

Communication is key

Had we not communicated early on what our plans were for our futures, we would have set ourselves up for failure by expecting our idealized family portrait from each other.

I’ve seen it too often in new relationships where couples are smitten with each other but never talk about the hard topics that could make or break their future. Next thing you know, they’ve split up because one of them is dead set on kids and the other is dead set against it. We weren’t going to let that happen to our love story.

I said I wanted a child within weeks of us getting together. I said it knowing what a heavy and controversial topic it would be if we weren’t careful and considerate. She said she didn’t. She was in her late 40s and traveled extensively for work. Bringing a child into our relationship was a hard no for her. It was then up to me to decide if I wanted a child more than I wanted to continue loving her.

I took the risk, and it paid off with interest.

I made the conscious choice to give up being a mother for someone I was falling madly in love with. We still talk about kids, but these talks look different now as we navigate a life filled with experiences we wouldn’t have if we had had children.

She knows I don’t hold her responsible for my empty womb. And I’m proud of her for standing firm in her convictions, knowing the burden she would leave me with most of the time.

Our commitment to communication and our happiness with all we have been blessed with without a child, are important reasons we are child-free and still happily married.

We both needed emotional maturity

No amount of communication was going to be successful without emotional maturity. If we couldn’t start from a place of love and understanding, we were only going to end up in arguments. A solid foundation built on honoring but managing our feelings meant none of our conversations about children would end up as fights. My wife was not responsible for me not having a child.

I recently found out, through the popular ancestry website, that an egg donation I made in my 20s resulted in a successful pregnancy. There is now a 10-year-old boy somewhere out there with pieces of me woven into the fabric of his existence.

Upon this discovery, my wife held my hand, and we talked about our feelings. I wasn’t sure of what I felt, but she felt apprehension. Which was understandable — she decided for herself she didn’t want children, but a child could come out of the woodwork looking for me. That’s not what she signed up for.

I empathized with her feelings while still honoring my exploration of whatever was stirring in my heart. And no fights were had because of this out-of-left-field discovery. We met each other with love and are continuing to process this news united.

Without a solid foundation of emotional maturity, our home of love would have just been a house of conflicting, negative emotions. And without complete honesty in our communication, our home would have been a house of facades, ready to crumble the first time I said, “I want a child.”

Instead, we have no regrets. And we continue to enjoy our very successful child-free marriage, filled with experiences, laughter, love, and dogs we put in sweaters.