I'm not ready to tell my mother that I don't plan to have kids. Keeping this secret is hurting our relationship.

• After a decade of going back and forth, I now know that I'm not going to have kids.
• I'm happy with my decision, but worry that I'll be letting my mother down.
• I'm not ready to break the news to my mom, and the secret is hurting our relationship.

When I was in my early 30s, my mom would frequently mention a neighbor of ours, who didn't have kids. In my mom's eyes, she was always in a bad mood. Despite not knowing the circumstances of her childless life, my mum 'knew' that this was the root of all of her problems. Needless to say, I felt uncomfortable whenever my mum talked about this woman — possibly hinting at my future — and it made me not want to bring up my own choices when it came to having children.

At that point, I was still unsure whether I'd have kids one day. I was past the common delusion of 'I'll get pregnant when I'm 35' I once had thanks to a breakup with a long-term boyfriend. Honestly, having a child was the furthest thing from my mind.

I eventually met my now-husband who was the one that gave me the most clarity on the internal kids-or-no-kids dilemma I'd been struggling with for about a decade. He made me see that having kids wasn't something I had to fit into my life at any cost. Our life together could be complete with just the two of us. My mum, on the other hand, possibly saw my new relationship as a fresh chance to become a grandmother. We were on very different pages.

My mother always assumed I'd give her grandchildren

In my early 20s, I moved to Spain for my studies. My mum encouraged this move, saying she wanted me to travel and see the world before settling down and starting a family.

During an emotional mother-daughter moment over Spanish wine and tapas we had while she was visiting, she told me that she was planning to gift me her birthing diary one day. She'd been keeping it safe for me until the time I'd be expecting my first child. As her first-born and only girl, I just nodded along, teary-eyed, feeling a little overwhelmed but thinking that future me would certainly appreciate this gesture when the timing was right.

My kid-free life is fulfilling

Fast forward almost 20 years, and I'm living a life I couldn't have dreamed of back then. I've settled down on the coast of Portugal with a house looking out over the ocean and I have a loving husband and two gorgeous rescue cats to keep me company. I know my mum is content knowing that I'm happy, but it's the unspoken words lingering between us that have cooled our relationship over the years, which means I'm not racing back to Austria to see her all that much.

Ignoring the issue is keeping us apart

Is it too late to bring up this topic with her? Does she still share the same strong opinion about childless women she had a decade ago? The longer I wait to have 'the talk' with her, the more uncomfortable I feel about it. I know I shouldn't feel guilty for my life choices, but for some reason it feels like I'm letting my mum down and I don't want to deal with that right now

I'm very grateful that my brother has two beautiful kids, which I hope softens the blow to my mom a little bit for me and my situation. After all, she is a grandmother.

As for now, I'm just sitting out holidays and birthdays until I reach one where she certainly must feel that I'm too old to start a family. I'm 43 now, maybe that time will come in four or five years? However, when my mum was 50, she confided in me that she was briefly thinking about having another child. She might actually never give up hope.

It's not like she doesn't suspect that I don't want to have kids — I assume — but picturing myself saying it out loud to her sends me down an anxiety rabbit hole. Maybe it's just the tension between us accumulating over the years, and once we clear the air, we can both move on with a new outlook that can bring us closer together again. Here's hoping, but for now, I'm not ready to have that conversation