"I want children, but the love of my life doesn't": How do we choose between the life we have and the one we long for?

Dial Emma

Emma Reed Turrell

Society & Culture, Relationships, Mental Health, Health & Fitness

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 3 November 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Welcome back to Dial Emma! Each week, I'll be answering your dilemmas with honesty, empathy, and a few therapeutic truth bombs to help you make sense of life's stickiest moments. If you've ever wished you had a therapist in your back pocket, Dial Emma is here to help.

In this week's episode, I explore the sharp end of love - those crossroads where heart and future pull in opposite directions.

Two listeners share life-defining dilemmas that ask the same haunting question: What do you do when your heart and your future don’t want the same thing?

In our first letter, a woman faces the agony of wanting children, when her long-term partner does not. To answer it, I unpack the difference between change and self-realisation, how resentment grows in the spaces where love stands still, and why sometimes two truths can both be right but no longer fit together.

In our second dilemma, a happily married listener confesses to falling in love with someone else. I delve into the anatomy of emotional infidelity, the unmet needs that lie beneath attraction, and the difference between a relationship that’s wrong and one that’s simply outgrown.

If you have a dilemma for Emma, please fill out this form.

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Dial Emma is hosted by Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Lauren Brook.

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Social media:

Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell

Dial Emma @dialemmapodcast

Email: [email protected]

Transcript

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0:00.0	Tuesday night on a sofa watching telly with mum again.
0:04.9	May your hawkers stay with the mothers for life.
0:07.7	This is the moment Stephen chose to speak to Barclays about mortgage boost,
0:12.7	so he could borrow more with help from family or friends.
0:16.0	We're helping first-time buyers get on the property ladder sooner.
0:19.5	Search Barclays' mortgles.
0:21.2	Barclays make money work for you.
0:23.8	Your home may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage.
0:26.6	Subject to application financial circumstances and borrowing history, Ties and CIS apply.
0:31.2	Hello and welcome to Dial Emma, the podcast where your dilemmas meet my therapeutic insights.
0:37.8	I'm Emma Reid-Torrell, psychotherapist, author, and well-recovering people-pleaser.
0:42.4	Each week, I'll be unpacking real-life questions from listeners just like you.
0:46.9	The big ones, the small ones, the ones that keep you up at night,
0:50.5	offering practical tools and gentle truths to help you find your way through.
0:55.2	So if you've got a question, you don't know how to ask out loud.
0:58.7	You've come to the right place.
1:08.0	Welcome back to Dial Emma.
1:10.2	Today we're exploring the sharp end of love. Those moments when you know the relationship is important, maybe even life defining, but the path forward is tangled with risk, fear and longing. Both of today's dilemmas ask the same question in different ways.
1:30.9	What do you do when your heart and your future don't want the same thing?
1:37.8	Let's start with our first dilemma.
1:40.6	I want kids.
1:42.4	My partner of ten years doesn't.
	...

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