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Home alone: Liz is resigned to her own childless state now she is in her 50s but thinks it would have been better to have been honest with her exes about her desire to be a mother |
Please read this story, it is an eye opener for both men and women. Liz Jones makes her most shocking confession yet.
Anyone who meets me, or reads what I write, would think I don’t like children and never wanted to be a mother. Indeed, for most of my adult life, having a child was the furthest thing from my mind.
I wanted a career, freedom, a nice house and to keep my figure. As a feminist, I looked down on mumsy types.
But when I was in my late 30s, I decided that if I didn’t get pregnant soon then it might never happen. I had also reached a point in my life where I wanted to settle down with a man, and though my boyfriend at that time was wildly unsuitable, I thought that I could change him.
Shall I list the ways in which we were a mismatch? He lived with his parents before he moved in with me, and earned very little money. I was working on a newspaper and was fiercely ambitious. He was laid-back, I am not. I was ready for a baby, he wasn’t.
And yet I wanted to hang on to Trevor. I thought that if we split up I might not get a replacement boyfriend in time to use my rapidly dwindling egg supply.
Trevor had never given me what I wanted from a relationship. At first, he wouldn’t even have sex with me. Then, finally, when he moved into my flat (probably more out of a desire to be able to walk to work than any real love for me) we started a physical relationship.
He was still very cautious, though. He refused to believe I was on the Pill, and insisted we use a condom for every moment of our intimate contact.
‘I don’t trust you,’ he said, muttering something about women claiming to want a career, but underneath wanting to start a family.
I called his bluff and told him there was no way I would want a baby with him, given he didn’t earn any money. Yet the truth was, I had hatched a plan that many will doubtless find shocking.
Because he wouldn’t give me what I wanted, I decided to steal it from him. I resolved to steal his sperm from him in the middle of the night. I thought it was my right, given that he was living with me and I had bought him many, many M&S ready meals.
The ‘theft’ itself was alarmingly easy to carry out. One night, after sex, I took the used condom and, in the privacy of the bathroom, I did what I had to do. Bingo.
I don’t understand why more men aren’t wise to this risk — maybe sex addles their brain. So let me offer a warning to men wishing to avoid any chance of unwanted fatherhood: if a woman disappears to the loo immediately after sex, I suggest you find out exactly what she is up to.
As it turned out, my attempts to get pregnant by Trevor failed, and shortly afterwards he and I split up.
But my dreams of motherhood persisted, and I resorted to similarly secretive methods to conceive in my next relationship. And given that I was in my early 40s by then, this was an even more urgent situation.
At least on this occasion we were married, which you might think would — should — give a woman every right to want to start a family. But my husband was 14 years younger than me, and he had told me he was not ready for children.
But I didn’t listen. All I heard was my own ticking clock, not his reasonable desire to be allowed to grow up himself first.
Of course, not every woman in my position would resort to extreme measures. But I do believe that any man who moves in with a woman in her late 30s or early 40s should take it as read that she will want to use them to procreate, by fair means or foul, no matter how much she protests otherwise.
A 2001 survey revealed that 42 per cent of women would lie about using contraception in order to get pregnant in spite of their partners’ wishes.
Perhaps my husband should never have married me if he didn’t feel ready for a family. Perhaps I should never have married him. There are always two sides to every dispute, but I think the words I flung at him when we eventually broke up were: ‘You stole my last child-bearing years from me! ’
My own attempts at being a ‘sperm stealer’ failed. But there are plenty more like me who are willing to give it a try.
Among my circle, many girlfriends have told me how they have tricked their boyfriend or fiancé or husband. One found herself childless in her 40s, so she lied to a very new boyfriend that she was on the Pill. He is now in a new relationship having to pay support for a child he never sees.
Another friend was engaged but her fiancé walked out on her. She is 39, and told me she was hoping she was pregnant ‘so he would have to come back’. Yet men remain in blissful ignorance of such tactics.
I spoke to several men before writing this article. One, in his mid-30s, has just got engaged to a woman who is 39. He told me he is not yet thinking about starting a family, as he is self-employed and worried about the recession. They also live 45 miles apart, each in their own flat.
He told me he wants to wait until they have a house together, and for his business to become established.
I bet his fiancée will be pregnant within the year.
That’s why I believe men should be much more wary. Too many of them underestimate women; too many of them muddle along, swept up in the beady-eyed focus of the prospective middle-aged mum.
And the lengths these women are willing to go to make my half-baked attempts seem amateur. One tells me she used secret hormone injections to make herself more fertile; another uses a clandestine ovulating chart kept in the tea towel drawer (a place she knows her husband never looks in).
I spoke to another friend over the summer who told me she was trying to get pregnant with her fiancé. She said: ‘I really want a year off work. I might even go part-time after that, maybe two days a week. He will just have to work harder.’
It reminded me of the time when I asked my now ex-husband whether he was dating again. ‘No, not really,’ he replied. ‘I don’t want to get some woman pregnant, find out she’s a cow, and spend the rest of my life shackled to her.’
Callous? Yes, but given the way some women behave in their quest for motherhood, not totally unjustified.
So when is a woman most likely to become a sperm-snatcher? If her career is not panning out exactly as she thought it would. If she is 37 or over and childless. If she worries the man might walk out on her. I believe these are the women who are most likely to be panicked into making the decision to get pregnant in whatever way they can.
Women today are used to getting what they want; they believe that ‘having it all’ is their right, not a privilege. Women no longer think merely being ‘married’ to their work is in any way satisfactory. Life without a child is seen as a failure.
I am resigned to my own childless state now I am in my 50s. What I have learned, though, is that it would have been better to have been honest with my exes about my desire to be a mother.
Neither of them knew about my subterfuge. I imagine both will be furious when they read this piece. I still have days now when I wished the sperm-theft had worked; that I had a daughter or son my husband felt compelled to visit.
Not, I’m ashamed to say, because I think I’d be a particularly good mum, but because our relationship would not have been a complete waste of time, with nothing to show for it but bad memories and a shared cat.
Of course, I realise not all women are willing to take such drastic action as me, but I suspect many resort to more subtle means.
A friend in the U.S., who is six months pregnant, has just responded via email with her thoughts on the subject.
I know her relationship with her boyfriend is volatile, so I asked her whether the pregnancy was a joint decision.
‘Well, it was joint, yes. I think so. You have to remember that no man will ever think he is ready for a family. Sometimes you have to push.’
‘Did you steal his sperm?’ I asked.
‘Not in the way you described, no, that’s disgusting. But I stopped taking the Pill, mainly because it was making me fat and moody.’
I didn’t reply that I wonder how her boyfriend will feel in a year’s time, when she is fatter and moodier. No matter how urgent that yearning for a child, deception is surely no way to embark on parenthood.
We are always debating a woman’s right to her own body and her own destiny, but what about a man’s right to his body, and to his future?
If there are any men out there even contemplating getting close to a woman in her late 30s or early 40s, I suggest you tread very carefully.
She might be the woman for you; she might be totally honest if she says she doesn’t want to rush into motherhood But she might also be a duplicitous creature willing to go to any lengths to fulfill her dreams of having a family.
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