As wonderful as being a parent can be (or so I've been told), kids can really put a strain on a relationship.
Whether it's because one person doesn't want kids, there's a serious mismatch of parenting styles, or people just straight-up lie about already having children, disagreements about kids often lead to breakups.
After reading these stories from the BuzzFeed Community and Reddit, I'm not surprised:
1. "He refused to put in 50% so I left and took her with me. He never took me to court, and never even established paternity so he could have visitation (we were never married). No regrets here. 🤷♀️"
2. "I wanted kids. She didn’t. We got divorced."
"The moment we both accepted the fact that neither would change we knew there was an end date. We still care about each other a great deal and are good friends. In fact, once we accepted that the divorce was happening, our relationship improved." —u/funandgeeky
3. "'I guess I could have one kid, if it’s that important to you' — said after four years of dating and serious talks about getting married."
"There were other issues in the relationship that I didn’t acknowledge at the time, but hearing this was definitely an eye-opener. I didn’t want to parent with someone who was doing it as an obligation to me. I wanted a partner who was excited about doing the adventure of parenthood together. Five years later and I’m engaged to someone else who can’t wait to start a family with me." —katiebee16
4. "About 10 years ago, I was dating an undercover single mom who claimed she didn't have kids and didn't want any. It turned [out] she had three."
"With me knowing the truth (because her baby daddy told me), she said she would give up her own kids to be with me. I couldn't trust or respect that. Last I heard, she was on baby daddy #3.
Looking back, I'm so glad I dodged a bullet." —u/goofmazin
5. "We were late 20s/early 30s and had been together for 18 months. I was always up front with him that I saw marriage and children in my future. After many arguments about next steps, I point-blank asked him if he wanted marriage and kids generally (not with me). He said he’d never actually turned his mind to those questions."
"I told him to have a think and get back to me, as they were non-negotiables for me. A few months later, I asked him what he’d come up with. He said he still hadn’t thought about it. I walked. Later that year, I re-met a guy I’d met a few years before who I’d always thought was gorgeous (mutual friends). Turned out one night I’d walked into a party with now-ex and he’d thought, Why the hell is she with that guy? He had a bit of a crush on me but thought I had moved overseas with my ex. That man and I got together, and he made it clear from the start he was all in. We moved in together officially after four months (always a point of contention with my ex), and we got engaged a day before our one-year anniversary. We’ve bought a house together and will be married in a few months. We can’t wait to start a family. Moral of the story is: DO NOT SETTLE. You cannot negotiate on kids because you either have them or you don’t, which means one party loses." —NobleGoat
6. "My boyfriend of TEN years broke up with me because he realized that he couldn’t live without having kids."
"It was a total shock to me, and he’s kept it to himself for almost three years. I didn’t have a clue. It turns out he just went along with what I wanted (no kids ever) to make me happy — he didn’t listen to what he wanted. It’s for the best that we broke it off." —u/creative1985
7. "I wanted children, and the person I was engaged to didn’t. I felt like I could tell him why I wanted children, but he could never fully explain why he didn’t want them. He would just say, 'I just don’t want them.'"
"If I was going to give that up, I needed to know the reason. I couldn’t accept the answer of 'because I don’t' — what got him to that mindset? His parents, health, family, genetics, hates kids? I was willing to make the sacrifice but needed to be able to fully understand why I was giving up the chance to have kids.
I left him and let him think he dumped me. I didn’t have the heart to do it.
Fast-forward: I married a man who didn’t want to have more kids. But he told me his thoughts behind his choice, and it made sense." —kileyfitzgerald
8. "Got invited to a poker game at a girl's place. Four-year-old kid is up at 11 p.m. running around, takes silverware drawer out, and dumps entire contents on the kitchen floor. His mom looks at me and says, 'What are you gonna do about that?' She wanted me to discipline her kid, after dating for two weeks. She was looking for a dad for the kid. Nope."
9. "Not me but an uncle. He had already had a kid who was in college, but his new wife wanted to try. They tried for YEARS and finally, were able to get pregnant with IVF with twins after using someone else's egg. Cut to seven years later, and she is still breastfeeding and refused to start teaching them anything (i.e., colors, numbers); we're talking basics here."
"My uncle finally had enough when they turned 8 and asked for a divorce. He had no other issues (even if the family did) with her, and he only divorced her so those kids could start going to school. Kids are 10 now and they share custody, but he has full school and medical decisions. While they are doing OK now, it has been a very serious struggle these last two years for all three of them." —kirkendolled2020
10. "My parents know someone who was dating a woman, and he really liked her so he decided to pay for them and her son to go on a cruise. The guy hadn't really met the son yet (who's 11 or 12), but within a day of leaving on the cruise, realized the kid was a nightmare."
"The mom didn't discipline him at all, and he was causing a lot of trouble. The guy was so shocked and fed up by the situation that when they got to their second stop of the trip, he left the ship and flew home. Left the woman and her son on the cruise, didn't ask her to pay him back or anything." —u/mnl11
11. "I'm aggressively childfree. He knew this from the first date. We fell in love; we were together for two years and lived together during the first few pandemic lockdowns. One day he woke up and said, 'I'm turning 30 this year, and I really, really have to be a father one day,' so we broke up."
"That was just over a year ago. In the year since we broke up, we both moved on and kept hanging out as friends. I stopped dating because there's little choice for CF women. We are still in love. All our friends say we're going to end up married and happily CF in like 10 years! We're unofficially back together. He said he's going to work on accepting being CF because it means being with me, and I'm the love of his life. I may get my fairy tale yet!" —mosansoye
12. "Was going out with an old friend; her kiddo was 1.5 at this time. Custody was evenly split between her and the dad. No worries."
"Started getting bad when I was getting roped into buying clothes and stuff for the little kid after about a month of dating. And it was done very passive-aggressively. 'It's getting colder, (kid) doesn't have a jacket or shoes, and I can't rely on her piece of shit father for anything; he's just going to give me shit.' Then she starts crying and having an anxiety attack, so I would get stuff.
Little kiddo starts calling me 'da-da' by month three. That is nowhere near the pronunciation of my name, and I didn't want to be the dad, because, despite the previous paragraph, the kid's dad was actually a good dad; it's just the mom who was an intolerable bitch. A fact that fully came to light when I found out she was cheating on me with a different ex-boyfriend who ended up getting her hooked on pills. So the cheating thing and me becoming what I had no right to being as her kid's dad had me 'nope' the fuck out of that by month four." —u/biomech36
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