My parents have had a terrible marriage for basically as long as I can remember. I have been anticipating their divorce on some level since I was about 11 (I’m now in my late 20s), and I don’t know why they don’t just pull the plug. In fact, I don’t even know why they got married in the first place; they don’t enjoy each other’s company, they don’t have congruent ideas or tastes on basically anything, they’re basically incompatible in every way.

I think they both would have been better off if they had split up early, never gotten married and never had children together. They should have married different people, or just not gotten married at all.

The obvious implication of this, of course, is that I shouldn’t have been born. This does cause me some existential discomfort. Thoughts occur to me like, “Why do I care so much about the future? Why do I pay so much attention to politics? What’s the point of advocating for socialism or trying to work towards a better future? I don’t have kids, I can’t have kids*, I don’t think I should have kids, and I don’t even think my parents should have had me. In a better timeline, I wouldn’t even be here anyway.”

*(I had a vasectomy a few years ago)

I would like to feel a bit more assured about all of this. What do you think?

  • FreudianCafeEnglish
    6·
    7 months ago

    First id like to say something about your parents marriage. People dont choose partners based only on the good things they have, we often (very often indeed) choose what problems we want to have. Of course, for most people they do it inconsciently. But as much as humans want to be loved in a certain way, we also want to be hated in certain ways too. Maybe your parents are just a very bad case of this, but its present in all relationships to some degree. And also, lots of relationships based on hating the other can be very durable. Im not saying its good or desirable, its just how things are.

    But talking about bad decisions, cheese was created because someone made a bad decision about storing milk. I rest my point about this. And another thing about you being born and raised, you really cant do it without love. You really cant parent out of just obligation.

    And yes, you should think about politics too, and worry about the future too. What you are today is not only what you got from your parents, you also contain your friends, your relationships, your heroes, your enemies, the art you saw, random kind and bad strangers that you met, etc. So you are going to be passed down to the future, with or without kids.