Greetings from Finland! I got my vasectomy yesterday at the age of 30. Starting from that age a Finn can get sterilized with just the approval of the doctor that’s going to perform that surgery. That procedure was a huge relief in my life. It may sound weird to some but I rejected all kinds of intimate interest from women (even though I am a hetero male) until this point in life mostly because I always, since childhood, had that nagging fear of procreating which is something I really want to avoid as one could see 😃 Girls must have kind of thought I just don’t really like females or something 🤣 Temporary contraception to prevent pregnancy is too unreliable to me in my personal case; I don’t want a relationship where I would constantly worry about contraception failing. The contraceptive items could break, I couldn’t know for sure if a woman has used her contraceptives; and some female contraceptives would carry too big of a health risk to her (I just cannot tolerate those risks to my prospective lady but want to cherish her).
I’ll just have to wait a few months to hopefully get a negative lab test to show there are no cells to create offspring in that stuff. Then I can finally start looking for a spouse without fear of pulling a trolley around the balcony later on. I have realized lately that a relationship usually just doesn’t work (not all cases of all people are such, however) if one of the partners is a childfree-minded individual and the other is not. So I think the only way to find happiness and longevity with a spouse in my case is to find a partner who is sterilized, too. I just know of too many cases of a person telling to their not-willing-to-reproduce partner that they don’t want kids, either, and after basically building their life together, telling to that partner that maybe a kid would be a good thing after all and then divorcing.
This surgery was one of the best things to happen to me ever. I am really happy with my decision. However, some very conservative religious relatives and other such people around me might give me some nagging and whining if they somehow find out that I got sterilized. I still have my Christian faith like I used to, I just won’t make kids. Marriage is not meant to be a Victorian era “Shut your eyes tight and think of England” kind of thing, anyway 😃
I’m 27 and will probably be getting it soon. It sounds like it’s not as bad as I though, while also doesn’t affect your sex life in the negative sense later, so that’s good to hear!
What do you think is the best age to start considering it? I’m pretty deeply set on not having kids and I don’t see anything that would convince me otherwise, and it’s so important to me that it’s one of the first things I mention when starting a relationship. I was always trying to make it clear that I will pay for and handle protection, if something happens I always went to get the pills asap, and always was clearly communicating that if even through all of that a child happens, I’m helping with abortion as much as I can, or if she wants to keep it I’ll keep paying her but she will never see me again. While it does sound harsh, it was important to me to get the point across even at the cost of sounding inconsiderate, so I think that I’m pretty much decided on that matter.
But I have no idea how do humans and biology works, and I’ve already seen what the brain can do when I overdid something and got a temporary psychosis, even though I’m perfectly normal otherwise - so if there is some kind of biological process that makes you want kids later in life, I guess I may reconsider and then suffer for it - hence the question. Did anyone older experienced such a strong change of opinions later in life, regarding children?
My experience with the surgery was that I was a bit tender for a week or so, nothing terrible though
You obviously feel pretty vulnerable during the procedure, but I was chatting with the doctor as he did his work which took 10 minutes maybe
I drove home afterwards (sitting was uncomfortable) and iced the boys for a while
The doctor actually offers antianxiety meds to his patients and I saw at least one guy that went with them - his wife was escoriting him while he was all spaced-out
WARNING: contains mental health topics In my case, there were, to put it mildly, rough times in my teenage years regarding my mental wellbeing, so your last paragraph sounds to a quite high extent relatable, actually. The human brain is especially interesting when one has experienced it do weird stuff. But I find that rising like a Phoenix bird from that mental torment (I am so glad the rising happened) has actually been a thing that made me a better thinker than I would have been without all that happening. Mental anguish in the form of anxiety and feeling low about myself and life persisted for quite a long time but in the last few years my wellbeing finally improved a lot and those feelings have mostly subsided. To the point, I have during my years on this earth so far concentrated so much on metathinking about the mind and other mind-related self-improvement that I nowadays have a perhaps exceptionally high awareness of thoughts and feelings happening in me and lots of self mind control capacity, leading to the conclusion that in my opinion, if you have felt for a very long time that you definitely don’t want kids, in my experience that may very well be a thing that is there to persist. One thing I would recommend to consider when thinking about the choice on whether to have a permanent birth control is whether having kids was something you were strongly wishing in your teenage years or adulthood. For me, there was almost all the time no will to ever have children, except for some rather short periods I was kind of thinking about it but those were really strictly exceptions in the whole timescale. Also, which would be more horrible to you: having a child when you don’t want one or being unable to have one when you cannot, no matter how much you want to have one? It might also be a decent idea to estimate the odds of those feelings happening, were you to choose the applicable option in the sterilization choice. I myself in my case have no fear of ever having the regrets of my no offspring decision. And even if that sadness somehow happened, one thing to think of to help to ease that emotion is the meaning of the saying “the grass is always greener on the other side”. One cannot both have kids and not have kids. The choice of no kids grew even stronger in the last decade of my life and was super strong for several years before I did the vasectomy. I never was a person that really liked to be around kids, even as a five year old I usually preferred and picked the option of listening to adults talk stuff and somewhat partake in the discussion myself when my family was visiting friends and relatives rather than play with other kids, though that too happened. The adults just were even back then intellectually more in sync with me than the other kids. There is in my opinion no set-in-stone best age to start considering the operation. I myself maybe half a decade ago read about that operation on the internet and it resonated with me (I knew of vasectomy as a phenomenon much earlier, but only at that later time I started to strongly think about it and pretty quickly I knew it was the thing that I was just going to do (which did become true months after I got old enough to get the procedure easily here in Finland). Sterilization is one of those things I cannot recommend lightly, as in, without thinking very well through that thing and one’s feelings about that, a sterilization can very easily cause lots of regrets. Sterilization is like crossing a no return line in the floor of life. If you want to still be able to walk back to that safe zone of child creation ability, sterilization may not be for you at the time being. The thing, however, is that life is always an uncertain adventure. For some people these kinds of choices are easy and for some they are not. For me the choice was pretty easy but I did make sure to think through it thoroughly enough to not fear that there would be a wish in me to reproduce. Hopefully this gives some food for thought. Take care and remember that it’s your decision. Sometimes in life it is good to think about things some more. Sometimes, it however is time to just go for it. Take care.
Disclaimer (because I don’t want this post taken down): THIS IS NOT A CONTRACT. THIS IS NOT AN AGREEMENT. This is not medical advice. I am not a medical care professional. I am not a lawyer. Contact a licensed professional at your own cost and at your own risk in cases you need medical or any other kind of advice. The above text is based on my personal life experience and should be taken with a grain of salt (unless your doctor has ordered you to limit your sodium consumption). The above text is not a recommendation to undergo any form of therapy, treatment or any procedure whatsoever. I accept no responsibility for any financial, social or the Big Baby industry related damages or any other forms of damages or injuries arising from reading the above text or arising from being influenced by the above text. I accept no responsibility whatsoever. The use of the information contained in the above text is at your own risk. In case of a legal conservatorship or guardianship, the use of the information contained in the above text is also subject to a written approval from the appropriate entity. The correctness of the above text is in no way guaranteed. The above text is provided for entertainment purposes only. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED (excluding those that have been transferred or forfeited by a written contract signed by me).