Confession: I had a baby to try to save my relationship​

Hi everyone. I have lurked on this sub for years, but I wanted to share my story.<br><br>&#x200B;<br><br>I had my baby several years ago. She is now a grown adult. I have hidden this truth my whole life, no one knows, and I will not say who I am.<br><br>&#x200B;<br><br>I fell in love with a good man. I was single and having fun, and we were both in love, but I wanted to get married. He didn't want to get married, so I decided to have a baby to try to make him want to marry me. I thought that if I could just make him see how beautiful a family would be, he would decide he wanted to marry me<br><br>&#x200B;<br><br>I was sadly mistaken. I spent years of my life raising a child I didn't want, with a man I didn't love anymore, feeling so much guilt over what I was putting my daughter through, and him through, and what I was doing to us all. I didn't have the money for a child, I was young, I was so selfish and immature. I didn't think of any of that before I got pregnant.<br><br>&#x200B;<br><br>I have never told anyone that I did this on purpose, ever, not even my closest friends or my daughter's father. I have never told my daughter, and she is very proud to have her two beautiful children, and she is an amazing mother. I will never tell her I did this, because I want her to think that I was the best mother I could be, and I don't want her to have any doubts about her own parenting, but I am here to say that having children for selfish reasons is the worst thing you can do to yourself and to everyone involved in the situation. It is a selfish thing to do, and it will hurt everyone involved, and hurt your relationships with the people you love. Your child is a person, and they deserve to be loved and cherished for who they are, not used as a tool for your selfish desires.<br><br>&#x200B;<br><br>I will never regret how much I love and adore my daughter, but I will also never regret that she is my only child. I never wanted children, and I did it anyway, and it made my life and my relationships so much harder than they would have been.<br><br>&#x200B;<br><br>I apologize for any formatting issues, I'm a dumb old cow and I don't know how to make the paragraphs work here.