For two years, we tried to build a family. What we didn’t know was that the real threat wasn’t infertility — it was pressure disguised as love. And when my parents gave me a choice, I made the wrong one.
The first time my mother said it out loud, she didn’t even lower her voice.
“You’re wasting your life,” she told me at the kitchen table, stirring her tea like she was discussing the weather. “A woman deserves a family.
And you’ll never get one with him.”
I remember how the spoon clinked against the porcelain, rhythmic and sharp, like a countdown to something breaking. I blinked.
“Excuse me?”
She didn’t even flinch; her eyes, steely and composed, met mine across the table.
“You heard me. You’re 34. You’ve wasted two years chasing something that isn’t going to happen.
At what point do you admit it’s his fault?”
And yet, through it all, Ethan never blamed me, not once.
“We’re a family already,” he’d say, holding me while I cried into his chest. “A child would be a blessing, not a requirement.”
He meant it.
I could see it in his eyes every time he kissed the top of my head, every time he held me through another round of bad news. But my parents had their own story, and they clung to it like gospel: it wasn’t me.
“You’re healthy.
You’ve always been healthy,” my mother insisted. “If you had married a real man, you’d have a child by now.”
“I love him,” I said quietly. “Well, love won’t give me grandchildren,” she snapped.
I should have walked out then.
Should have stood up, told them to go to hell, and left with my head high, but I didn’t. Instead, I sat there in stunned silence while the people who raised me dismantled my life like they were fixing a broken appliance.
“You need to think about your future,” my father said. “A woman without children has nothing to show for her life.”
Nothing.
That word clung to me like smoke.
At first, my parents wore their concerns like a mask. “He’s the problem,” my mother started saying, as casually as if she were diagnosing a cold. “It’s simple biology.
If you were with someone else, you’d already have a baby by now.”
My father, less theatrical but just as brutal, took a different angle.
“He’s selfish,” he muttered one night over dinner, stabbing at his food without looking up. “He’s stealing your future.
Your right to be a mother.”
Ethan sat across from them, silent, shoulders rigid; he didn’t respond. But I saw the way his jaw tightened with every word.
I saw the way his fingers gripped the edge of his chair, trying not to explode.
Ethan was proud, kind — and breaking, slowly. My aunt joined in the chorus as well. She’d glance at me, sigh deeply, and murmur, “Poor girl,” loud enough for Ethan to hear but low enough to pretend it was just pity and not an attack.
He never snapped and never raised his voice.
But every dig left a bruise, and I saw him bleeding on the inside. My mom started forwarding me links to articles with headlines like “When to Start Over” and “Women Who Wait Regret It.” My dad took me for coffee just to drop comments like, “You need a real man, sweetheart.
One who can give you a future. Not a maybe.”
It wasn’t a concern anymore; it was a campaign.
They didn’t just want me to leave Ethan.
They wanted me to erase him; Every photo, every memory. Every quiet Sunday morning that we danced barefoot in the kitchen, even though the world was falling apart. They wanted all of it gone.
Then came the night that cracked me open.
We had just come back from yet another specialist, the kind of appointment where the doctor avoids eye contact and uses words like “unlikely” and “complicated” in sterile tones. I was hollowed out, drained from crying in a parking garage stall, and I needed to catch my breath.
When we got home, my parents were already there — not visiting. Waiting.
They didn’t ask how the appointment went.
My mother stood and took my hands like she was staging a scene in a soap opera. “Sweetheart, we’ve talked about this. It’s time to be realistic.”
My father leaned forward, his face stone.
“If you don’t end this,” he said, “we’re done.
No insurance. No safety net.
And the inheritance? Gone.”
Then came the word that hung between us like a noose.
“Choose.”
Behind me, Ethan stood in the hallway, his shoulders drawn tight, his eyes locked on mine.
“Do you want this?” I asked him, my voice barely above a whisper. Not because he didn’t love me. Because he didn’t want me to carry the weight of this — this constant storm of guilt and shame, this war between loyalty and legacy.
My mother didn’t even acknowledge him.
She spoke to me, only me, as if he wasn’t flesh and blood standing in the room. “He’ll never give you what you deserve,” she said.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page to discover the rest 🔎👇
