Hi Everyone, firstly can I say I'm here because I've obviously got a huge issue forthcoming and secondly because I've read responses from people on other threads and found them to be very empathetic and considerate. Maybe I can help others at some point.
I live and work in London and was 'seeing' a Parisian French girl who was easily the nicest person I had met in recent years after a very hurtful breakup. She is 7 years older than me with a son who is 6 and they live in Paris.
Once she returned to Paris we were in fairly regular contact although I wasn't 100% convinced I was going to commit purely because of the distance. Some weeks later she told me that she was pregnant and that she was intending to keep the baby. This horrified me initially because I barely know this woman and she lives abroad. How could I possibly be a father to a child who lives abroad ? My father was very good to me and the prospect of being an absent father scared me deeply.
We retained good dialogue in spite of the difficulties and over the course of the next few months I began to be more logical about the situation and suggested different arrangements, including her moving to England. Her spoken English is pretty good and I speak next to no French. She then came to visit me in London. We had a lovely time together and started to develop very romantic feelings toward each other. At the conclusion of the weekend, she said that she wanted to terminate the pregnancy because the situation was senseless and unworkable. she was also smoking a lot at this point.
I was obviously very relieved with this news. She returned to France, booked an abortion in the Netherlands which was arranged for March. I tried to get time off work to be with her at the clinic in Holland but wasn't able too but she travelled to Holland alone and told me that the termination was successful. Because we had developed great feelings for each other and also because of the stress involved, we later booked a short holiday together to try to forget the past.
Moving on, a week before our holiday we had been messaging each other quite happily when she decides to tell me that she lied entirely about the abortion and that she was expecting the baby in October ! This was honestly an incredibly hurtful breach of trust which I thought I would never recover from. I still don't really know why she did it but I suspect she wanted to have the baby in secret to cut me out and then felt guilty about it. I wanted to cancel our holiday but my mum convinced me to be strong enough to go, so I went.
The holiday was very strange with loads of incredibly confused feelings. She was smoking heavily again and I upset her when I basically described it a child abuse to the unborn child. That said though we enjoyed ourselves well enough and had a nice time. Obviously I have no control over the situation so just try to be as civil as I can but now I'm back in England I'm struggling so hard to know what to do;
Do I
a) Try to forget the mother and the child altogether ?
b) Try to maintain contact with the child but accept that a relationship with the mother is impossible because of this huge breach of trust
c) try to find a way to forgive her and try to form some sort of relationship for the future somehow ?
I appreciate that this is a long post but I think to get good responses and advice its really important to get the details across. Thankyou so much