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Are you ever fully ready?

When I felt that the relationship with Rachel was starting to get serious I set my stall out early. It seemed only right; kids were an important part of my life journey, and despite not knowing 100% that I wanted them (maybe 80% - I mean, can anyone be 100% certain of anything so life-changing??), I felt it was my moral duty to put forward my position. Rachel might have had no aspirations for children, what would I have done then? 


You read all sorts of stories of children brought into the world with parents who have an unstable relationship. Maybe the children were an accident, maybe they were the cause of the relationship issues, or maybe the parents are just arseholes anyway - whatever the reason, I wanted to be certain that I had given the relationship (and eventual marriage) as long a time to grow and strengthen as possible - logic would suggest that's the best thing for the child, and for any challenges that might come up along the way in bringing them up - I'm yet to speak to a parent who said bringing up a child was easy!


Rachel was thankfully on the same page as me, although her convictions on the subject weren't quite as strong. She thought she wanted children, but hadn't given it a huge amount of thought until I brought it up. No doubt there was a panic at first with her probably thinking I was growing impatient (understandable, we had probably only been dating about six months when I brought up the subject - (too soon?!)


After what was an extremely short conversation, we both decided that yes to kids, maybe, someday, perhaps. 


Lets have a relationship first, then maybe get married and go from there and see what happens shall we?


Seemed like a good a suggestion as any.

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