Ask HN: How to deal with regret of not having kids

You are depressed, anxious, and have lost sight of what you want out of life. I don't know if kids are the bandage here. At the least, you need to figure out yourself before, or at least in parallel, to working on introducing young children into your family.

It's hard to offer specific advice on such a broad topic to a stranger. You've taken the right steps (therapy, counseling), but you have yet to find your inner peace. What do your social connections look like? Genuine social connection is usually highly correlated with happiness. Those connections can give you a sense of purpose (which is part of having kids) and a "place" in this growingly isolated world.

I'd start there, if you have not. Investing in people and in the relationships you have is absolutely critical to ones happiness. I'd be curious to hear more about how you see this part of your life.

If your wife doesn't want kids, I'm afraid that you will have to make a difficult decision either way. But, you can still become the cool uncle if there are kids in your family: take them to trips, attraction parks, movies,... and offer the parents a deserved break.

You have been in the two extremes of parenting. From deciding not to have kids to miserably missing the kids you didn't have.

So, my question is: Is this really about having/not having kids, or is it some kind of existential crisis projected in the absence of kids in your life?

Start IVF now.

Look at overseas options ie Thailand if you need a donor and it's tricky locally.

[Start looking at surrogacy] - This is hard

Continue counseling. There's something bigger going on, a kid won't solve your problems.

And who knows, maybe in 30 years time you can do it. I'd bet aging might be reversable by then. It might just cost $. I have heard rumors of cloning, also needs $, start with IVF.