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Woman’s life changed when she met a man who not only wasn’t her type but also didn’t want children

By Nina Steele 

Katherine Baldwin’s story is typical of many successful women today. As a high flying career woman (she was the political correspondent for Reuters), she had achieved everything on the career front and decided in 2008, aged 37, that the time had come to fulfil the other part of her life, namely find herself a man and start a family. It seems that even a woman as successful as she was could not extricate herself from the definition that society has set for what constitutes a fulfilled and happy life.

Her search for a partner turned out to be quite a journey! She had her mind set on a certain type of men, as opposed to letting fate take its course. She wanted someone who was as ambitious and driven as she was. Unfortunately for her, all the men she met who ticked all her boxes turned out to be a disappointment. Of those men she said: “the ones I fell for were unbearably arrogant, too busy or after someone younger”.

The inevitable consequence of her willingness to only settle down with a certain type of men, was that she failed to give a proper chance to some very good men she met along the way. Of those men she said: “With my heart set on my alpha male, I simply couldn’t bring myself to fancy someone ‘nice’. I had achieved so much. I wasn’t prepared to settle for anything less than fireworks in love”.

As is often the case with stories like hers, at the end, she realised that she was in real danger of never finding a partner unless she changed. It wasn’t the men that were the problem, it is the ideal she had in mind. She sought professional help to make sense of her life and came out of it a changed woman.

It wasn’t all plain sailing after that though. That it took her 3 years to finally commit to the man who is soon to become her husband, shows how many psychological hurdles she still had to go through. Not only that, her new man made it clear from the beginning that he didn’t want children, while she thought otherwise. At the end, her love for him was too great for her to bail out. Of this she said: “I realised that I wanted to be in love more than I wanted to be a mum”.

So many people, particularly women, will identify with her when she says this about the way her life has turned out: “My life looks nothing like the one I’d imagined for myself. I thought I would keep working as a reporter, marry a man with a high-powered job, live in a big house in London and maybe have a few kids. But by chasing a fixed idea of success and happiness, I came close to ending up alone, with no partner to love”.

I am glad that she managed to do away with some of the social shackles that have caused so much pain for so many people.

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