The Strange Nuances of Dating as a Childless Woman

The good, the bad, and all the gray areas

“I love that you don’t have kids. Everyone I’ve dated has had kids and they just don’t have time for silly fun like this. But you’re always up for a late-night chat.”

I heard this once in one of my brief attempts at dating after my last serious relationship. We were texting late at night. Talking on the phone until the early morning hours.

I can’t seem to help myself. I suppose I’m basically a 16-year-old girl on the inside. I’m mostly over the delusional romantic fantasies that come with that age but damn, I love to fall in love, I love to flirt, and I get so excited to hear from a crush.

Want to chat at 11PM? Hell yes, I do.

Want to text until midnight? Please. I’m all yours.

Yes, this is a huge privilege of childless and childfree women. We are available. And I love to be available. I love to fall down the rabbit-hole of attraction and lust and feel the whole dizzying intoxication of it all. Life is far too short and far too hard not to embrace all the good that comes to us.

But when I heard that comment, I felt deflated, somehow. Something about it didn’t feel very good to me.

And it felt even worse when he disappeared one day after a few weeks of those late night chats that had become an emotional bookend to my day and apparently were just filling time for him.

Being a childless woman in middle age and attempting to actively date is weird. I know that’s not very eloquent, but I don’t know how else to put it.

I have yet to have the chance to date other genders, with or without children (the queer female/non-binary population in my county seems pretty sparse), so I can’t say if this dynamic is different with them, but with men, it makes me feel like the balance of power is even further off than usual.

Most of the time, they have one or more kids, though usually, they have (very) part-time custody and their role as a father doesn’t seem to come into play except in very specific moments when they have to cancel plans at the last minute because of an issue with the little ones. It’s a strange dynamic in which they have a whole other private world — one that will always be (and should be) far, far more important than me. There’s this part of their lives that I feel like I’ll never be able to experience with them — one secret place that will never be accessible to me.

Further — and I realize how ridiculous this might sound — I often feel jealous. They got to have kids and I didn’t. And many of them seem so lukewarm about the experience, something I wanted so badly. Why did the universe give Lukewarm Larry a baby and not me?

I get jealous of their exes, too, believe it or not. These guys don’t want to have any more kids, which I understand, but it can be hard to make peace with the fact that you met them at the wrong moment in their lives. That once upon a time ago, with someone else, they were willing to have kids — but not today and not with you.

Then there’s all the tension around reproduction in a new relationship between two people in middle age. Men will often hold themselves at arm’s length from me because they assume I’m going to want to milk them for all the semen they have in a desperate attempt to make my dream of motherhood come true.

Our culture doesn’t understand the very complex nuances of a middle-aged childless woman’s feelings and desires. Some of us wanted to have children very badly, but aren’t necessarily anxious to experience that in our mid- to late-forties. It’s hard for people to understand that we can grieve not having become mothers, we can wish things had turned out differently, we can be jealous of those who did have kids, and still have come to a place of accepting that the window has closed, the opportunity has passed.

Nevertheless, childless women are often treated with suspicion by potential male partners who adamantly don’t want to have any more children. I’ve always tried to be very honest that I wouldn’t be sad if some miracle of birth control failure allowed a second miracle of one of my tired but earnest eggs to be fertilized — but hell if I’m going to actually try to get pregnant. At almost 45, I’m exhausted and hormonal enough as it is.

Do men believe this? Or are the cultural stereotypes about childless women just too hard to look beyond?

All that said, there are also a lot of benefits to being a childless woman on the dating scene. As I mentioned, I can text or chat with someone until midnight without having to worry about getting up early to get Junior to school. If I wanted to have someone over for a last-minute drink-and-cuddle, the only dirty underwear I have to pick up off the floor is my own. And yes, I can have sex whenever the hell I want, and make as much damn noise as I please.

I wouldn’t say that any of this “makes up” for not having kids. I don’t think we can really do that with life — weigh the pros and cons of a situation in an attempt to compare the incomparable. You can’t weigh the heaviness of not having had the experience of motherhood that one dreamed of with the benefit of being able to indulge in spontaneous sex. It’s just not the same thing.

But I try to take comfort in the positives. If everything I’ve been through has somehow “earned” me the privilege of sexual freedom in ways many women don’t get to experience, then great! I’ll take that.

Except…where is it?

I find that, as a childless woman, I’m both catnip and some kind of repellent to men. They love my freedom. And they love my availability even more.

But then there’s the whole issue of whether or not my status comes with an underlying agenda. Can they trust me when I say I do not, at this time, have any intention of pursuing motherhood? And that if I were to change my mind, it wouldn’t matter because the shop is closing?

Or do they just see me as a potential threat to the independence and freedom that they envision on their horizon?

There’s something that I think childless women prize because of our circumstances: that “something” is possibility. We know what it’s like to want something we couldn’t have. We know what it’s like to feel like something passed us by, evading our grasp. We know how fleeting life and hope can be.

I think some childless women approach dating with a deep desire to pursue specific possibilities: motherhood or a partnership with someone who has children.

Whereas others, like me, are looking to see what “alternative paths” exist out there. Without children, I am free to pursue relationships and sexual experiences that would be less accessible to women with children. I don’t have to worry about creating a stable home life and financial security in a partnership. And if the potential partner already has kids, it’s a lot easier for me to blend into their family as one person, rather than a mom with kids.

Personally, I’m excited to see what life has to throw my way. Polyamory? Sure, I’m game. Monogamy? Okay, I’ll take another go at it. Casual sex? I’m thinking about it.

I don’t want to say no to anything. I’ve had enough nos in my life.

The funny thing is, a lot of men don’t seem to know how to deal with this strange phenomenon — the middle-aged woman without children — even though there are so many clear benefits to having a relationship with us.

Sometimes, I wonder if they take us seriously as potential mates or sexual partners. Is the fear of our biological clock so intense to them that they’re willing to pass on us as a demographic? Does our availability somehow diminish our value in their eyes? Are we too easy and too threatening at the same time?

I don’t know. All I know is, in the end, we often don’t get picked for the team. The dads who don’t want to expand their brood tend to end up with women who already have children of their own or with much younger wives with whom they suddenly want to have more babies. (Either way, they expand their brood.)

This makes me wonder if some men see childless women as a placeholder when they’re in between partners. Are they really interested in dating us, or are they just bored and in need of attention from women with a little extra time on their hands?

It’s strange to me that women without children are often overlooked by potential mates. It would seem that with our ability to make time for a lover, enjoy spontaneous sex, and experiment with different relationship structures that we’d be a prime choice for a middle-aged man who didn’t want any more kids and who prized freedom and self-exploration.

Instead, childlessness sometimes feels like an extra complication that has to be navigated.

However, I’m going to choose to hold on to my own perspective of it: that it can be a gift in a relationship. That the right people won’t see me as just a convenient bridge to help them get from one lover to the next. That they’ll appreciate my lack of strings and desire for possibility.

And ultimately, I hope that they learn to see beyond my childless status and just see the woman beneath that. Because she’s a fun lady who’s willing to have text conversations at midnight.

© Yael Wolfe 2021

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