Case Study

“You can’t always get what you want.” — The Rolling Stones

I may as well go personal.

The article linked above in part details our struggles in having a biological child of our own. My wife and I strongly believe in adoption, but our experience in that realm was also difficult.

We were older and the fertility treatments did not work out; subsequently, the birth mothers of most of our adoption prospects were looking for younger couples. But we kept moving forward.

My wife and I met when I was 36 and she was 43. I remember well our first real conversation. As in, our first heart to heart, which occurred three weeks after our first date and it was obvious the attraction was there.

“We need to talk,” she said.

I was taking groceries out of the car. There were no signs of anything off-kilter.

“You okay?” I asked. “Is something wrong?”

She paused. “You’re too polite. You haven’t asked me my age yet.”

I put the bags on the car. “Okay. You’re right. You need to talk.”

“You? What about we?

“I don’t care how old you are.”

“I’m 43.”

“Cool.”

“That’s it?” she asked.

“That’s it,” I said.

Here’s the reality: She warned me and I was wholly aware she was older. But it takes two to tango.

This combination, not the shortcoming of one or the other, could not conceive.

After two rounds of unsuccessful fertility treatments, we decided to adopt.

Eventually, my wife and I were approved to be parents. We drove from Los Angeles to Utah to meet an expectant husband and wife. We signed the requisite initial paperwork, and we believed all was well. When we returned to Los Angeles, we waited to hear from our adoption attorney that the rest of the paperwork was ready for our countersignature.

We had not heard back from him, so we called. The attorney had been trying to reach the couple himself, to no avail. We discovered, nearly a year later, what had happened.

Unbeknownst to any of us, the husband made a deal with his father, a wealthy man who was part-owner of one of Los Angeles’ top talent agencies. The father promised his son a substantial monthly payment if they put the child up for adoption. The father believed that the couple were not yet equipped to financially handle the responsibility.

The husband, though, did not want to give up the baby. The wife did. The husband orchestrated a plan to accept his father’s money, for the six months prior to the new child being born. Once the baby was born, the husband would say something to his father about the opportunity “not working out.”

How did our attorney find this out? The father called him, asking if he had heard from his son. The father explained the situation, and we were called by the attorney. The next week, we received a followup call. The husband reached his father, and told him his wife was leaving him. He said he needed help, as his wife threatened to fight him for custody of their newborn child.

That was the end of it. We heard nothing since.

Not only did we have to accept that difficult fact on the heels of ending our fertility treatments, but more importantly the woman I loved was heartbroken. The woman who knew from the beginning how much fatherhood had meant to me, who had reluctantly warned me about her age during an early heart-to-heart — while letting me know she was fully aligned with my goals and had only waited until she met the “right guy” — suddenly needed me in a whole other way.

And for that reason I was the luckiest man alive.

Still am.