I’m feeling a bit sad tonight about something that happened today and also just how I feel my husband feels about me in general. You’ll probably all tell me that I’m just such hard work and he’s worn down by me. But here it goes.
we were talking about the fact that I might have elective surgery ( cosmetic ) at some point. Tummy tuck to be precise. Might as well just say it as it is.
he was like oh god, I’m not looking forward to all your complaining and recovery. You’re going to be a nightmare for ages and it’s going to be this massive thing I’ll have to deal with. I hope you’re not going to be how you were after your two c sections.
for reference, I had PND twice. Especially with my second. But both times it was just very hard. I really struggled to breast feed, I tried everything - including the hospital breast pumps. Everything. I threw money at it too with lactation consultants etc. I beat myself up about it. It was hard. My husband wasn’t there to do any night wakings and I just did them all on my own. I fell into a spiral of just crying a lot. He made insensitive comments about how I was just wasting money on breast pumps etc. but anyway, I really needed help. He just couldn’t deal with it. He’d just sigh and walk away when I would cry when he came home in the evening. He never comforted me or tried to help me/ put anything in place. He just made it clear I was irritating and a problem for him and he had empathy fatigue.
I get it, it must not have been easy to see your wife crying. But he never, not once, suggested anything that could help me or did anything really to actually help me.
so it really upset me that he made that comparison today. About how I better not behave the same way I did when I had PND. I feel like he thinks I’m a loser. A loser who couldn’t handle having babies and ended up ‘ crying all the time ‘. He never actually acknowledged that I was really suffering / struggling. I think he just thinks I’m a bit pathetic. I thought about driving my car off the road. I didn’t, I wouldn’t. I broke down crying in a supermarket once because i was just so tired. It wasn’t just me being pathetic, I wasn’t doing too good and he literally never helped me in any way. He never said - enough is enough you need to see the doctor / I’ll take time off— nothing. I just had get through it.
now he’s mocking me ? He also upset me a couple of years ago where a conversation came up about postpartum and I said how hard it is and he was all like ‘ all you women want is babies and when they come, you can’t stop crying. Women in the olden days just had to get on with it‘ or something like that.
anyway, I am sure many will say I can’t possibly understand what it’s like to live with someone going through it and it’s all my fault.
but I feel unloved, disrespected, not seen and like a pathetic burden.
when I said that I was told I always go ‘ too deep ‘, and make a big deal about nothing.