I'd Rather Get Pregnant With My Gay Best Friend Than My Husband
I think it's just something you do when someone means the world to you.
PV productions / Shutterstock When I met my friend Jacob, I knew he was the one. He was exactly everything I had ever wanted in a human being, the person I had literally searched for my whole life, and there he was one day, in my office, and I just knew. We immediately clicked.
We had the same sick sense of humor, could go head to head in wit and sarcasm, and he was also the last person I wanted to talk to every night before bed. He was, of course, gay, because how many straight men are so perfect?
Long before I met my husband, Jacob and I decided that, if he wanted to have a child someday, I'd be there for him. Not just there for him emotionally, but physically, too. In other words, we would have a baby together, and although it would be ours, he would take on the majority of the responsibilities.
We'd live separately, as we do now, and I'd get to be the "cool" aunt who got to do all the fun stuff that cool aunts get to do — like I am now with my nephews. To us, it seemed like the perfect solution to the hankering he had inside him to have a baby.
As I wrote recently, I see kids as a burden.
I just don't see them fitting into my lifestyle, and although since getting married, I've thought about having one, perhaps, I still lack the urge and motherly instinct that comes with strongly wanting to procreate. Maybe I'll change my mind someday, but I imagine if it didn't hit me by now, as a woman in her mid-30s, there's a good chance it will never come at all. But all that thinking is something I'd be willing to shelf for Jacob.
Although Jacob isn't ready yet, I know that being a father is part of his plan. While he has thought about adoption, he really wants a baby that is part of him, and as his very biased best friend, I can see why. Unlike myself, I know Jacob would make a great father.
He has far more of a maternal instinct than I am ever likely to have and his overall compassion for humanity is unparalleled. For him not to have a child that has his blood pumping through its veins would be like robbing the world of something really great.
I may not care for people, unlike Jacob, but I’m at least willing to see that.
And to be part of that process, to be part of him fulfilling his dream to have a child that is part of him, would be the greatest gift I could give him.
I feel, after almost a decade of friendship and putting up with me, he more than deserves it.
When I talk to people about Jacob and how I'd rather have a child with him as opposed to my partner, they just don't get it.
They see it as some sort of insult to my husband as if I'm suggesting that I don't want his child. But the way I see it is that, for starters, my husband already has a kid from a previous marriage, and since I'm not exactly mom material, why would I not want to offer up my uterus and an egg to someone whom I love dearly who wants a child?
It may sound complicated when you say it out loud, but I think loving someone that much, isn't very complicated at all. I think it's just something you do when someone means the world to you.
I knew Jacob for eight years before I met my husband. My promise to Jacob that we would have a kid together if that's what it comes down to for him, was something I made years ago.
I strongly feel that just because I'm married now, I shouldn't turn my back on my friend. I would never and could never do that, and my husband agrees. My husband has also said that he'd be disappointed in me if I were to renege on Jacob. So, I won't.
At the moment, Jacob's thoughts on children change from day to day, and it's no guarantee that he will ever want one, especially the more time he spends around his unruly nephews, but at least he knows the option will always be there.
In having a baby with him, I get to keep my life intact, but also have a piece of me out in the world, which I'm assuming is one of the big reasons people have kids. You know, to leave a little bit of you around after you've gone.
My mother assures me that if Jacob and I were to go through with it, it wouldn't be as easy for me to relinquish the majority of responsibilities and time with our baby to Jacob, and maybe she's right, but we'll deal with that should the time come.
What I do know, for a fact, is that I'd rather have my best friend's baby than my partner's, and none of the parties involved think that's even remotely strange.
Personally, I think we'd make for a lovely modern family, and that baby, having Jacob as a father, will be the luckiest kid alive.
Amanda Chatel is a writer who divides her time between NYC and Paris. She's a regular contributor to Bustle and Glamour, with bylines at Harper's Bazaar, The Atlantic, Forbes, Livingly, Mic, The Bolde, Huffington Post, and others.