Two posts in one day. My apologies. I didn’t intend for this to happen but apparently my brain decided it would be a good idea to put more out than what I would normally consider sensible, so this post is brought to you by my brain.

My brain: For the times when rationality has no place.

In my opinion, children are great. They can certainly teach adults a lot.

However, they aren’t for me.

I’ve wanted to have kids for a long time. I always tried to justify it in some way and I tried to discuss it a lot with my ex. Not so much to convince her (as she doesn’t want children), but because I liked to talk about the possibility.

I’ve never wanted them out of love though.

Parts of my family are seriously screwed up. It’s nowhere near as bad as a lot out there but that doesn’t mean I had a completely healthy environment growing up (although there are certainly things I am grateful for) and it had a strong negative impact on how I percieve myself.

Eventually I decided that one day I would have kids because it would validate me as a good person. Nothing more. I gradually started to add other reasons to justify my thinking as something more than completely selfish desire.

Thinking you’ll be a good person if you have children is not a good reason to have children. You’re not thinking about them. You’re making it all about you.  Sure, you may succeed and raise a family well, but that is a bad place to start.

It put a massive strain on my relationship because I didn’t recognise that I was already being validated as a good person.

So, how do I change this?

That I’ve recognised the issue and that I need to stop pursuing it is already a good start. It means I can move on from the problem very easily. But if the idea of children ever comes up again, I’m really going to need to think hard about whether I would be having them for something beyond selfishness.

I also need to be able to validate myself as a good person instead of relying on trying to achieve serious external commitments like starting a family. Although I am now, it doesn’t matter how much I do if I don’t accept that I can and will be a good person.

Hopefully my brain doesn’t decide to put more out today.