Nobody Talks About This Side of Marriage —Until You Hear Your Husband Say That (2 of 2)

Then came last weekend. We were standing in the kitchen, the girls watching TV in the next room, when it all came spilling out. I told him I was exhausted. That two kids were enough for me. That I didn’t want to put my body—or our marriage—through another round of sleepless nights, diapers, and endless bills.

He didn’t yell. He didn’t argue at first. He just looked at me with this coldness I’d never seen before and said, *“Well, if you’re not even willing to try for a son… maybe I need to rethink this marriage.”

For a second, I thought I misheard him. Divorce? Over a baby we might not even have? Over a child he couldn’t guarantee would even be a boy?

I laughed. A sharp, ugly laugh. “You’re joking.”
He didn’t laugh back. His jaw was set, his eyes flat. And that’s when my stomach dropped.

This man who had held my hand during labor, who had cried when our first daughter let out her first scream, was now looking at me like I’d failed him. Like my worth as a wife, as a partner, as a woman, hinged entirely on whether my body could produce a Y chromosome.

I wanted to scream at him, You have two daughters who think the sun rises and sets with you. You have me. Isn’t that enough? But my throat closed. Because deep down, in the pit of my stomach, a horrifying thought started to take root.

What if it isn’t enough? What if he really means it? What if everything we’ve built together—all the late nights, the sacrifices, the years of trying to hold this family together—what if it all unravels because I can’t give him the one thing he thinks he deserves?

I lay awake that night, the house finally quiet, staring at the ceiling and listening to my husband’s steady breathing beside me. My heart pounded so loudly I was sure it would wake him. And for the first time since we said “I do,” I let myself wonder… what if he actually walks away, and I’m left with two little girls asking me why their father chose not to stay…