Just the two if us: Rowena believes her marriage to Roger has lasted because they didn’t have children.
The symptoms were horribly familiar. My period – which normally arrived like clockwork – was very late. Waves of nausea had begun to wash over me. A test taken in the family bathroom confirmed what I’d guessed: I was pregnant.
Yet rather than rejoicing in the news that as a happily married woman of 30 I was expecting a baby, I was devastated.
For the second time in my life I was faced with the question of what I wanted more: a baby or my husband’s undivided love. And again, the decision was simple. Ever since I met Roger, I’d known I didn’t want to share him with anyone else, not even our child.That’s why both times I have become pregnant during the three decades of our marriage, without hesitation I have had an abortion: once at 21 and then again nine years later. Do I feel guilty? Not at all.
While others might accuse me of callousness and of being selfish and cold-hearted, I have no regrets because I believe the result of those two terminations has been an incredibly happy marriage.Quite simply, we have enjoyed the most wonderful, loving, adventurous life together, while I’ve watched friends with children struggle to maintain their marriages, not always successfully. Their problems, in my opinion, have been caused by putting their children first and their husbands second.I can put my hand on my heart and say I have always put Roger first, as he has with me. I believe we owe our long, fulfilling and deeply affectionate marriage to the fact we chose to remain childless.
The day Roger walked into my life is still so clear in my memory. It was August 1982 and I was a 17-year-old student at secretarial college, riding on a bus into Bournemouth town centre for a night out with my sister.Roger, an A-level student, bounded aboard and the course of my life changed for ever. Our eyes met fleetingly – his were clear blue – and something turned over in me.
I turned to my sister and said: ‘That is the man I am going to marry.’
Roger got off the bus before I had a chance to approach him, but I felt sure that I’d see him again. And when I spotted him two weeks later on Boscombe Pier with his friends, I made a beeline for him.I invented a party to ‘invite’ him to, but on the night in question there was, of course, no party.
Source: Dailymail