As the title says, I'm feeling very conflicted about my thoughts and feelings towards my partner.
I'll start with a little background history of our relationship then speak about the pregnancies and how having babies has changed us - please bare with me as this will likely be long and a little all over the place but I desperately need advice/outsiders perspective and feel I should include as much as I can.Â
Several years ago, I went through a break up with, what I would call, my 'first true love' and moved back to my hometown. Four months later, I got a new job where I came to meet my current partner. At that time, he was in the tattered ruins of a relationship with a controlling woman who made his life a complete misery, they was on the brink of ending things but never fully went through with it - that was of course, until I came along and somewhat sped up the process.Â
They ended up splitting and my partner and I started dating almost immediately. I had doubts in my mind that we were perhaps moving too fast, but we made each other laugh and cared for one another so I decided to go with the flow and see where things took us.Â
After 5 months, we moved in with each other in to a house share and things were great. We enjoyed each other's company, we had fun, our connection seemed to be getting stronger, it was obvious my partner was besotted with me. A couple of months down the line, I came to realise that my partner had a serious issue with talking about problems, feelings and just general confrontations of anything remotely serious. It's a problem that is still very prevalent today and something that upsets me greatly. He physically will not talk to me and every time I try and have a serious conversation with him, I have to actively ask him to look at me when I'm speaking otherwise he'll just stare at the floor and ignore me. Above all this, when he's done something wrong and he knows he's upset me, he won't apologise. He'd rather not talk about an issue, sweep it under the rug and pretend it never existed and move on like everything is perfectly okay. This in turn, makes me feel guilty for getting upset in the first place and I've started bottling up my feelings because it's easier than trying to talk to him.
That was the first 'red flag' I guess you could say. Just over a year later (and another move in to a different houseshare), we discovered we was pregnant with our first child. It obviously came as a massive shock as our living circumstances weren't suitable and we wasn't actively trying for a baby, but we were both, however, delighted to be becoming parents. The news of the pregnancy brought us even closer together, we started seeing each other in a newer, more serious light.Â
2 months before the baby was due, we moved out of the house share in to our first little family home - the first time we had lived together alone with no one else around.Â
I had our son via emergency c section (10 months ago) and the ordeal scared me and lead to me having post natal depression. I struggled for months after his birth but my partner tried to be supportive. Once I started to seem 'better', a new annoyance arose.Â
My partner never took my advice with anything to do with our son - be it how to handle him during the night, how much to feed him etc - he would go out of his way to do things 'his way', despite me telling him that in him doing that, he's making things worse and he should just listen to me given that I'm the Stay at home mum who does everything.Â
In the midst of this on going battle of me trying to prove to him that I did in fact know what I was doing with our son, I discovered that I was pregnant again. I would have conceived around 14 weeks after having our first DS.Â
Once again a huge shock which I'm still not fully over and I only have 12 weeks left until this bub here, but we've got on with it.Â
However during this pregnancy, there have been a few incidents with my partner that have completely changed how I see him.Â
I discovered he had a separate, secret Instagram account that he created in the first few months of us living together and had been using it for almost 2 years, and it was only to look at other women.Â
Some of them were models, granted, but a lot were just normal women, some even mothers themselves - but all of them were half naked in their photos, posing sluttily. This obviously upset me and massively broke my trust as I had no idea he'd been using a secret account behind my back, let alone actively looking at these images every night whilst I sat there feeling shit about my new, lumpy, bumpy and out of shape body. Over time I learned to forgive him, but truthfully I've never fully got over it.Â
Fast forward another three months, our son was 7, almost 8 months old - an absolutely terrible sleeper both day and night, I was around 5 months pregnant at this point and beyond the realms of shattered from doing every single night wake whilst battling the general exhaustion that comes with being pregnant. One Saturday morning, as I was sat in the nursery trying to get our son down for his morning nap after a week from hell of neither me nor the baby sleeping whatsoever - my partner comes in to say goodbye before he went off to work and tells me he'd be going to the cinema with his mother after work.Â
Pure tiredness caused me to be a bit miffed at the fact that after the horrible week I'd had, my partner was the one who got to go out for the evening whilst I was once again, stuck at home, pregnant and with a young baby - but I swallowed my pride and told him to enjoy himself. He told me he'd be home by 10pm, no later.Â
11pm rolls around, he's still not home, not answering my messages - I had no idea where he was or when he'd be back. 12am ticks over on the clock and he's still not back, bearing in the mind the movie started at 7:30pm and was only an hour and a half showing, you can understand why at this point I'm starting to get pissed off by his lack of whereabouts. 01:30am, I finally hear his key in the door. It took him an eternity to climb the stairs because he was THAT wasted. Turned out his mother went home after the movie and he stayed out on HIS OWN and got absolutely disgustingly drunk. He threw up all over my expensive rug in our lounge and was planning on leaving it until the morning if it wasn't for the fact that I made him deal with it. He then threw up everywhere in the bathroom, proceeding to wake our son with his heavy retching and gagging.Â
 The night turned from bad to worse as I had a go at him for randomly getting blind drunk when he wasn't supposed to be, spending money when we was so broke (my Maternity money had finished a few months prior and we was struggling) and ignoring my messages and calls (something he does every time he goes out). He proceeded to call me a cunt, a terrible, useless, lazy mother, said I don't do anything around the house - which in itself is hilarious as our place always looks like a show home thanks to me - and was just generally absolutely horrible.Â
The following morning, I took our son and went to stay at my dads for a day or two. I needed space and he needed to realise it's not okay to act that way. When we came back home after two days, my partner didn't apologise for his actions, for upsetting me, for the nasty things he'd said. I once again had to scoop an apology out of him which just angered me even more.Â
This all happened around 2 months ago and although I'm now completely over the sick on my rug, him wasting money, him essentially going MIA for almost 4 hours - I'm still not over him calling me a useless and terrible mother as I think I'm still battling with depression and he knows I struggle to feel positive about myself.Â
A few other smaller issues have cropped up, but in the last 6 or so months, those are the main ones.Â
I no longer feel close to him. We hardly talk, and when we do our conversations aren't interesting, they feel almost forced and like we're having them just to kill the silence. I've gone off of having sex with him which I know is normal when you're tired, pregnant and dealing with a baby, but it's more that I don't want to have sex with HIM as opposed to me not having a libido anymore. Little things he does have started really irritating me, grating on me. I don't like being cuddled or kissed, they make me feel awkward and weird.Â
I just feel so distant from him and don't know whether it's because the way he's acted lately has completely turned me off or whether it's just hormones wreaking havoc.Â
I've not felt properly passionate or intimate towards him since around 2 months after having our first son. I just don't care if we don't have sex or don't hold hands, or don't snuggle in bed of a night time. In fact, id much rather that we didn't.Â
I'm so confused whether or not these negative feelings will pass. I've been told the first year after having a baby is the toughest on a relationship and it has certainly changed our dynamic. He's an amazing father, loves our son dearly and I have no doubts in my mind that he'll show our next child the same adoration, but my love for him just seems to have changed to the point where I'm even beginning to wonder if I ever truly loved him in the first place which is just awful.Â
Please, is what I'm feeling 'normal' and pregnancy related, or does it seem that I'm just going off of my partner. I'm so scared given we're weeks away from having our second baby and everything just feels like it's getting too much for me to deal with. I'll do anything to keep this family together, but I'm growing sadder by the day at the thought of living the rest of my life with someone who I may not love.
Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody
Relationships
Have I fallen out of love, or are pregnancy hormones to blame?
AutumnLeavesandCandleLights · 14/10/2017 10:50
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