Our youngest asked the question at dinner, and I knew immediately she wasn’t really asking about the children. She was asking whether I regretted the life I’d built with her mother. I told her I loved every one of my children and that none of them had ever been a mistake. Then she asked why I’d never told her mother I hadn’t wanted children in the first place. I finally admitted that I had been afraid of losing her, so I said yes when she asked me to start a family. My daughter looked at me for a long time and then said, “That’s what Mom has always been afraid of.”
That night my wife and I finally had the conversation we’d avoided for thirty-one years. She told me she’d suspected it because of something I’d said when our youngest was born. I told her about the four years when I resented the noise, the responsibility, and the life I hadn’t expected to have. She cried when I admitted it, but not because she thought I didn’t love our children. She cried because she’d spent decades believing she’d given me exactly the life I’d wanted. Then she asked me whether I would change anything if I could go back to 1996.
I told her I wouldn’t change the children, but I would change the way I answered that first question. I should have told her the truth and let her decide whether we could build a life that worked for both of us. She said she wished I’d trusted her enough to risk losing her. We stayed up until three in the morning talking about the things we’d never said because we were afraid they would hurt each other. The next morning our youngest called and asked how the conversation went. My wife answered the phone and said, “Your father finally told me the truth, and somehow we’re still here.” After thirty-one years, I learned that loving the life you have doesn’t erase the truth about the life you once thought you wanted.
