Sue Fagalde-Lick always thought she’d be a mother one day. Born in 1952, she grew up during the peak of the Women’s Liberation Movement, and against this feminist backdrop, she never doubted she’d have a career. She hoped she’d be a writer. She assumed that alongside her job, she’d also be married, and have children. That was a given.

Yet at 31, after one failed marriage and several difficult relationships, she was sure she’d never meet anyone right for her. “Some of the men I’d dated were willing to have babies with me,” she says, “but they’d have been terrible husbands, so I figured I was probably done with dating, and was sure I’d never marry again.” 

Things changed when she met Fred at a Christmas party. He was her brother’s boss, and 15 years older than her. He was also the nicest man she’d ever met. “He was tall, dark and handsome,” says Sue, “and he was warm, loving, and a great hugger, who supported me proudly in my writing, and the music career I also had. He was smart, dependable and also funny. We got along, we had a great time, we were all over each other, and we’d burst into song sometimes, as we both loved music.” 

Sue says their romance grew quickly, and when he proposed, she said yes. It wasn’t simple, though. Fred already had three children (one seven-year-old, and two teenagers) from his previous marriage of 25 years. She also knew he’d had a vasectomy after his third child was born. “But Fred also knew I wanted to be a mum,” she says, “and we talked to my gynecologist about trying to reverse the vasectomy or having IVF. We got some information together on adoption.” There was no official plan, but for about a year, children seemed to be safely on the agenda. 

Then one night, after year or so, on a camping holiday at Yosemite National Park in California, Fred told Sue that he didn’t actually want to have any more children. “He didn’t want to go through having babies again, and it burst our bubble of joy for a while. I was so sad. But I was still young [early 30s], and I honestly thought, or at least hoped, he’d probably change his mind. I also fantasised that some sperm would break through, some miracle would happen. I deluded myself.” Fred didn’t change his mind, and there was no surprise baby. 

Sue decided to stay in the marriage. “I loved him so much,” she says, “and I was going to stay with him no matter what, because he was wonderful. But I was also heartbroken for a long time.” She struggled to come to terms with the idea, and found herself regularly in tears. In her book on the subject, Sue writes: “I was 50 before I could say, ‘I’m never going to be a mother,’ and mean it.”

Sue is far from alone: 18 per cent of women in England and Wales reach 45 without having had children. Research by the Centre for Social Justice suggests about three million women aged 16-45 in the UK won’t have children. In the US, where Sue lives, 52 per cent of women aged 20-39 are childless, according to data from the Carsey School of Public Policy. Research by Dr Robin Hadley – whose main area of research is the impact of male involuntary childlessness – found that 25 per cent of men over 42 do not have children.

The reasons for men and women not having biological children vary hugely – infertility, not having met someone to procreate with, being child-free by choice – the list goes on.  Yet what is rarely discussed is the cohort of men and women who want children, but their partners don’t. While plenty of people would leave the relationship, there are also those who choose to stay and sacrifice their future as a parent.

“I wasn’t infertile, as far as I know,” says Sue, “and I didn’t consciously choose not to have children… but in a way I did, because when my husband said he didn’t want more kids, that was my cue to say, ‘Well, hold on, I do, so if you want me, we have to try and have a baby.’ But I didn’t give him that ultimatum.”

Now that she’s 74, Sue has reflected on the psychology behind her decision to stay with Fred. She has asked herself why she let a man make the motherhood decision for her. Why didn’t she push harder? Why didn’t she leave him? Sue says her friend has suggested perhaps she simply didn’t want children quite enough to be more insistent and direct. All Sue knows is that she chose love over motherhood. “I figured if we didn’t have a baby, at least we’d have each other for a very long time, for as long as I could imagine.” This isn’t exactly how things turned out.

In the introduction to her book, Sue writes: “Call it a precautionary tale for how the lack of children colours every day of a childless woman’s life. If only someone had told me these things before I said yes [to marriage]. If only I had known what would happen later.” 

What happened later is that just over 15 years after they married, Fred began showing symptoms of Alzheimer’s at 65, and was diagnosed two years later. Sue cared for him until he died in 2011, and so Sue became a widow at 59. She had never managed to form a long-lasting bond with her step-children, and since their father died, there has been minimal contact. Sue got neither the children she wanted, nor a companion into old age. Does she regret the choice she made?

“I don’t regret staying with Fred,” she says, “because I think we had a love like most people honestly don’t get a chance to enjoy. It was a very special relationship. But at the same time, not having children has affected every bit of my life. 

“I hate not having children at Christmas and other holidays. There are also times I’d get so angry on Mother’s Day, and even now I get frustrated when I go to church and the sermons are all wrapped around the assumption that everyone has husbands, children and grandchildren.” 

Sue saw a counsellor to help with how she felt, but she felt they didn’t understand her grief about the loss of a potential baby. For a decade, Sue has run a blog called Childless by Marriage and she hears daily from people like her. Sue’s brother has children and grandchildren, and she sees them sometimes, but they live several hours away.

At the same time, the grief Sue feels is tempered by the joy she found in her marriage, but also her working life as an author, reporter and musician. “I’ve done things that maybe I could not have had if I’d been a mum,” she says. As she approached the menopause, her writing career took off, she was playing music publicly each weekend, she did a postgraduate degree. She also cared for her parents – her mother had Alzheimer’s – and she did this without facing the extra pressures of being the sandwich generation.

As she ages, it’s easier than it was in her 30s and 40s, when her friends were having babies. “Quite a few of my friends don’t have children, and some of the ones who do, their children live somewhere else. There’s enough of us to support each other through the tougher times, like Christmas,” she says.

With the benefit of hindsight, what does Sue advise others who find themselves in her position? “First of all, you need to really, really talk about it with your partner. You need to be sure that they’re never going to change their mind, that this is a hard ‘no’. And if that’s the case, how badly do you want a child?

“It’s a horrible decision to have to make, but is he worth it? If you leave, you might not meet somebody else – or you might. Would you do this solo? Talk to people who know you about it, too. Don’t hide away in shame. If you spent your whole life saying, ‘I can’t wait to be a mum’, then maybe you shouldn’t give that up.” 

Sue continues to advocate for those who have complex feelings about their childlessness, however it came to be. She feels she fits neither “child-free” nor “childless” exactly. People make assumptions about both those terms when the truth is more nuanced. “To be one hundred per cent honest,” she writes, “sometimes it hurts like hell that I don’t have children and grandchildren, and other times, it’s okay. Where’s the term for that?”