Any long-term relationship requires some amount of compromise, as any reasonable adult understands. Some compromises are fairly easy (like choosing décor) and some might require some real work, or even couples’ therapy to figure out. But there are a handful of topics where a compromise is basically impossible, no matter how much the people may love each other. The biggest example of this is the decision on whether or not to have kids. When one person wants kids and the other doesn’t, there really is no way to meet in the middle since having half a child isn’t really possible.
The impossibility of compromising about kids is one of the reasons that having the whole “are we going to start a family?” conversation before getting married is so important. People need to be honest about what they want, or else sticky situations like one recently described in a Dear Prudence column start to arise.
In a live chat conversation with someone using the alias Secret Keeper (SK), Dear Prudence columnist R. Eric Thomas had to weigh in on a situation where someone is lying about wanting kids. According to SK, her sister is engaged to a man who has made it "crystal clear" that he doesn’t want kids and sister is "lying through her teeth" about the fact that she does want one. Oooh, messy!
The couple is planning to get married in a few months and Secret Keeper is worried it is a "ticking time bomb."
The husband-to-be has kids from previous relationship, and the children are now grown. Additionally, he has had "the snip" and would "rather spoil his dogs." He’s also well-off, handsome, and funny, so he sounds like a great catch for a dog lover!
He’s likely not such a great catch for a woman who has been sending her sister "inspirational emails about older women having kids and nursery décor" while insisting to her fiancé that she’d be "OK" without kids of her own.
The couple are in pre-marriage counseling but Secret Keeper thinks she’s deluding herself and deceiving her fiancé.
According to SK, her sister "has been confiding in me that if her fiancé 'really' loves her, she should get a baby. IVF or adoption or whatever." While she supports her sister if she wants to be a mother, she’s wrestling with her obligation to the truth and her soon-to-be brother-in-law. Should she tell him the truth and save them from "an expensive divorce" when the truth about the kid issue is eventually revealed?
Complicating matters is that SK believes that "My sister ignores me when I tell her she needs to be honest now and not 'change' her mind once the ring is on her finger" and that SK was cheated on in her marriage because "no one had the guts to tell me about the cheating going on in my relationship." This is more than a little personal for SK.
Is this really Secret Keeper’s problem to solve?
While it can feel like there is always value in telling the truth (and SK might really feel that way after learning the hard way about secrets in her own marriage), there is also the sometimes telling the truth can make a messy situation messier.
Dear Prudie’s R. Eric Thomas advised SK to slow her roll. As he explained: "It feels like the only thing left to do is to tell the fiancé, but I don’t think you ought to go that far. It may save him some strife, but it also would draw you further into a situation that just going to keep creating stress. Your sister may have a covert plan, but I don’t feel like you’re betraying her fiancé by not spilling the beans."
As the columnist points out, the sister and the fiancé are both adults and SK doesn’t know what conversations they are really having behind closed doors about the kid topic —or any other.
It can be uncomfortable keeping a secret but that doesn’t mean spilling it is always the right thing to do.
While some of the Dear Prudie commenters disagreed with Eric, saying the sister is "scheming" and trying to "commit fraud" to trap a wealthy man, others argued that "with no pre-existing relationship to the fiancé, this is firmly not any of her business."
In fact, some of the commenters argued that SK was maybe a little thirsty for drama herself, and that, in advice column world, "There seems to be a category of LW that for some reason, feels the need to fix everyone or prevent them from making any mistakes. 90% of the time, these LW need to get a life. Not in a cruel way, but focus on themselves, create something for themselves, stop obsessing over other people's business."
Although Eric advised SK that "this is probably not a problem you can solve" and that she should keep her concerns to herself, we can’t help but wonder if she actually followed that advice or if that wedding invite list just got one guest smaller.
Here’s hoping the sister either fesses up or decides she can be happy being an amazing dog mom!
