Ending my engagement
It's been 10 days since my partner proposed to me. I said yes immediately, without thinking. After all, we seemed to love each other. I moved in with this fellow human some months ago. I felt happy when he proposed, and the first one or two days after we engaged felt wonderful. Both of us are academics, and we work well together. Our views on living sustainably align. We talked a lot about our wedding, that it would have a tiny ecological footprint as we would not have any guests or special arrangements. We would wear what we wear every day. We would eat what we eat every day. Perhaps we would go for a walk. It would be my dream wedding. There were many good things about our relationship. But there were also many unresolved issues.
Our relationship has always been discontinuous. My partner has childcare responsibilities, so he couldn't be there for me as someone who is childfree could have been. It felt like he lived in two worlds, our relationship and the other world. A few months into our relationship, he introduced his child to me. I liked them and even loved them in a way, I believe, everyone feels love towards other beings. We would spend some time together but it was not much.
Perhaps the biggest issue in our relationship was our stance on having (more) children. Me possibly getting pregnant was, in my perception, the biggest fear of my partner. I was not trying to get pregnant for many reasons. One was a lack of stability in our relationship. Another one was a lack of stability in my own life: academic jobs are precarious, and I want to always be in a position where I can raise my own child as a single mother, if this it what it came to. Yet another one was my partner's childcare schedule: he would not be able to be there for me, and it feels important since I live far away from my family and friends. I had concerns about how my child would fit within his existing established family dynamics, how my child would fit within my family of origin (e.g., they speak different languages to me). And there are plenty of other concerns such as keeping my child away from consumerism, living zero-waste, raising a human being alternatively rather than indoctrinating them into mainstream culture, competition. Yet, if I did get pregnant, it would not be the end of the world. I had an abortion many years ago. It was the right thing to do at that time, and I do not regret it. In fact, I am proud of the decision I made when I was very young. When I had an internal dialogue with myself about what I would do if I got pregnant (despite trying to prevent it) at this time in my life, I told myself that I would be ok with it. This is where the difference between my partner and I manifests. My understanding of his feelings about it is that he would not want that child. Naturally, this is something humans need to discuss before proposing and getting engaged. But somehow, we failed to do it. On some occasions, we spoke about having a child together, yet I could not tell if my partner was serious about it or not, whether this is something he wanted or said to avoid a difficult conversation.
I thought, naively of course, that getting engaged would somehow change the dynamics in our relationship. That both of us would feel more motivated to work on our relationship, that our communication would improve, that we would figure out where we stand on important topics such as children (his existing child and possibly our common child), finances, home, where to live and work. Yet, once euphoria wore off, hope diminished together with it. We once again faced a situation where our views about having children clashed. I believe that neither of us wanted to argue, as our arguments were never productive. For many hours we were in our studio apartment and we did not talk. As hours were passing, I was working on my article, reading a student's paper that I am examining.
I was thinking about my life and what matters to me the most. I was wondering why I was not feeling motivated to break the silence. My partner is not the love of my life. The love of my life is nature. I was also thinking about self love. I've said it before in my autoethnography that self love is incredibly important. I cannot serve nature and fellow beings if I do not love myself and am not on a spiritual path.
My partner left after many hours of silence. I sent him a message saying that I do not want to be engaged to him because there has not been any growth in how we relate to one another and there has not been any improvement in our communication. Some fellow humans would perhaps say that this should be said in person, but somehow it felt right to write it clearly instead.