> I only questioned why he would have brought kids into the "union",

They might be lead to believe "if only we got married ... if only we had kids ... that will 'fix' it." Even straight couples who aren't in love fall into this trap.

I don't know how well real life imitates art, but a lot of films involving gay historical characters have a similar enough narrative I assume it has some grain of truth: The gay person would rather not be gay (it would be easier for them), and is told by society that it's a choice. Maybe they even have some small amount of feelings for the spouse or think they can "learn to love them." See Rustin 2023 as an example of the psychology in action.

> I'll go to my grave still very sad about the could-have-beens.

Sorry for that. Loss is one of the hardest, most confusing emotions. That lack of closure and the unknown is a truly awful feeling.

> The gay person would rather not be gay (it would be easier for them), and is told by society that it's a choice.

What's striking about those stories is that there were clearly quite a lot of cases where people objectively chose not to be gay, but they did it by repressing and masking it away by working hard on exemplary marriages that delivered many offspring to their name. Ultimately this means that yes indeed they could chose to not be gay, but they would have to sacrifice their whole sense of self just to comply with a societal norm.

Being gay isn't the choice here, choosing not to act on your attraction/desires is. Might feel nitpicky but a very important distinction.

Not the person you're replying to, but they are replying to me. If there is any doubt about my position: being gay is 100% not a choice.

Having kids is half the reason (or more) for such marriages, nothing completes the nuclear family picture quite like it. And not like it's easy for gay couples in accepting environments to have kids either, surrogacy is banned in most countries ("liberal" ones too, US is kind of an exception here) and adoption is nigh impossible. Some countries like Italy go as far as selectively making both illegal, but only for gay couples.

I would say many asian parents care very little about the partner, as long as they get their grandkids. A mix of that and "what would society think".

Where did you hear that surrogacy is banned in most places outside the USA? That's just not true, and I suspect you've been indoctrinated with more US-exceptionalism. Surrogacy is not banned in the UK, Australia, NZ, much of Europe, Iran, much of Asia, etc.

It's "legal" at first glance but it's effectively banned in most cases. No monetary compensation, only direct relatives, only traditional pregnancy, etc.

It's outright banned (commercial) in most of EU. In most countries it was left unregulated for a long time but most of them are choosing to ban all commercial forms of it. Besides US, most major countries have banned it.

Now many people do ignore these laws and most governments do little to enforce them unless they make the news for some reason. Banning commercial forms of it just ensures abuse and issues go unreported. It's the paternalistic part of feminism that's been leading the charge for modern bans, with both liberal and conservative roots.

Surrogacy is illegal in Spain, Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Norway, Finland, and Turkey. Also banned in China, some states in the US and Québec. Thats a pretty hefty chunk of the worlds population.

A lot of other countries also have a limbo status where there is either no clear law making it illegal but put so many hurdles up that its impractical.

Some countries, like Italy, also make it illegal for Italian citizens to go abroad to a country where it is legal and then do it there.

> only questioned why he would have brought kids into the "union"

For a lot of people, building a family is a duty you embrace with your household partner. It's why you exist in the first place. It's why you get married and share a home with somebody at all.

Perhaps, if you're lucky, your children are a fruit of love, or perhaps, if you're horny, they're a fruit of passion.

But for a lot for such people, having and raising kids is the entirety of why you get married, and is the rationale for you might not marry for love or passion in the first place.

Marrying the person you're most attracted to or have the most fun with or whose pants you're most eager to get into is a very culturally specific practice and frankly, even where it is an aspiration, its one that a lot of people just don't luck into. But they nonetheless feel an obligation, and even desire, to form and raise a family anyway, and so they march ahead and get it done, hopefully with somebody that they respect as a partner and who reciprocates the same.

I don’t exist to produce children, tbh a very narrow view of what life can be.

That's great. Indeed, many of us don't see ourselves existing for that reason, especially among people who read and post on this site.

But many many many in the world do see it that way, and more even in the past -- when the "dad" would have been making life their life choices -- than do right now. Either partially, but significantly, or wholly.

My comment was helping its parent recognize the influence of that way of seeing the world, as it seemed to have escaped them.

Yea, solid take.

> Marrying the person you're most attracted to or have the most fun with or whose pants you're most eager to get into is a very culturally specific practice and frankly, even where it is an aspiration, its one that a lot of people just don't luck into.

Man, I feel this. And it's also funny that you write it in such an objective way but it's true. It _is_ a very culturaly specific practice.

I've lucked into it. It feels amazing. But I'm lucky that I was crazy enough to really teach myself how to get over rejection and just search for as long as needed to find someone who felt the same way about me as I felt about her. Amazing character building though, it was a true rite of passage for me that started around when I was 16 and ended when I was 32 and married. Dating and being good at it, in order to be in an amazing relationship, has been an obsession of my life. This was in part because I sucked so hard at it as a young teenager. I think in earlier times I'd have settled for someone unappealing or stayed a virgin. Thank god, the internet was a thing when I was young.

>For a lot of people,

if the social pressure was strong enough to push them to get married, it would undoubtedly be strong enough to push them into making babies

It is a sad story. But I will say that events in my life have really made me regret questioning the decisions of others.

I did things “right” I met my wife right after college, and I loved her dearly. We lived a happy life and have a wonderful son. We lost her a couple of years ago to cancer, followed by my parents and my mother and father in law, all of whom i was incredibly close with.

Yet life carries on. I come from a very traditional ethnic-focused catholic background. I’m not going to be following the standard script. I’m in my 40s, any partner will likely be divorced with their own child(ren). I’m not having more children. Will that partner be compared to my wife? Will I judged if she is too old/young/in a higher/lower status profession?

Reality: everyone has been incredibly supportive of my family and I. But the anxiety is there.

I would just say in looking at the lives of others, try to walk in their shoes. By all accounts the father in the story was not a perfect man. Few of us are. But consider that he was facing certain and complete rejection by his entire world, and he most likely made the choice that he felt was the least bad.

I strongly disagree. The father passed on the same trauma he experienced to his own child. It makes it worse because he knows exactly how painful it is but did it anyways.

I'm watching my ex do the same thing to our kid. I understand it on a mechanical level. But on an emotional level I will never understand how you can look into the eyes of your child and hurt them.

The mechanics of it are what you see in the OP. I see it in my parents, my aunts/uncles, and my cousins. It's somewhere between denial and minimization. It's like a defense mechanism against the truth which is something like my father didn't love me enough to not severely damage me. "They did the best they could" is a common refrain. Ultimately that ends up being their justification for hurting their own kids.

There is a balance to hit here. Yes, we are all human and you can't expect perfection. What you can expect and what everyone deserves from their loved ones is for them to at all points try to and not hurt you. There's forgiveness for coming up short if there's effort and steady improvement.

I agree. I don't expect perfection from anyone, including myself. But what I expect from myself is to give my kids a better upbringing than I had - which was actually a mostly great upbringing, but we should always strive to be even better. I despise parents who hurt their kids through negligence and inaction, I find it inexcusable.

"and he most likely made the choice that he felt was the least bad."

The least bad for him.

"mom had started asking for divorces by the time i was in my teens, and dad was the one who always said no. he would complain to her mother, a traditionalist, to ensure that she would berate her daughter back into line. his family and his culture had no place for him, so he used her as a shield to make sure that he would be spared the scrutiny"