Everything is a disaster, I can’t see a future. Flaming expected, advice wanted.

[ALittleBitofRain]

I see no possible way this post won’t earn me a flaming but I feel like I have a three car pile up going on in my head right now and some anonymous internet advice wouldn’t go amiss. Be as brutal as you like. This story is incredibly identifying but I’m pretty sure no one I know is a MNer. If you recognise me, please be discreet.

The facts: married for 18 months to partner of coming up to 11 years. I’m 33, she’s 37. She is 10 weeks pregnant (I am a woman, btw). As of 5 weeks ago, I feel the following things:

1. There is no way I am ready to be a parent. Partly this is due to current life-circumstances – I’m halfway through a PhD, which I love, and suddenly feel the timing of having a newborn/baby in the last year of this is ridiculous, what was I thinking. Partly it is due to big unresolved grief issues in my family – a sibling died as a baby, when I was a pre-teen, another died unexpectedly when I was a teenager and they were in their early twenties. How does anyone have a baby when they (the baby) might die? The risk seems far too big. I realise this is irrational but it’s how I feel. Although I am still sure I would like to be a parent at some point. (I have previously been unswerving in my desire to have kids.)

2. I am in love with somebody else. Have only met them 5 times in total. Nothing has happened, bar some mutually acknowledged sexual tension and agreement to never refer to it again. Met two weeks before we got married, immediately thought – fuck, I can never see this person again, they are too dangerous. Then inadvertently did see them 6 months later, then 6 months after that, then 3 months after that. After the second to last time I felt sick for 3 days and it took me a while to remember what those (strangely familiar) feelings mean. Cried my eyes out thinking about how we could never be together. Since then I have lost loads of weight without trying, been sleeping badly, etc, etc. Hoped I could cross my fingers and it would all go away, but it hasn’t. After the last time I don’t even know whether I should be trying to stop myself feeling how I do. (Feels too big and important.)

3. There are a lot of things in my (otherwise brilliant, but rocky for first 5-7 years) relationship I am unhappy about, mainly related to things that happened in the past – ways I was hurt by my partner’s feelings for other people, things I absorbed but didn’t get angry about. Also ways in which I feel I will never truly be what she wants – she has ‘made her peace’ with that, but why should she, and why should I be settled for? The way I feel with the other person is so entirely me, I had forgotten what that is like. I want that to continue, although I don’t for 2 minutes imagine that I would be able to start a new relationship with this person if I got out of the one I was in. At least not for a couple of years - dust would need to settle, etc, etc, also perhaps it is all in my head anyway. Can’t work out whether this is depression or the truth (scored v high on NHS test, am in therapy - it is helping, but not fast enough.)

Has anyone ever been in a situation remotely like this? The people who know me best tell me I am not a terrible person and have done everything in good faith, but honestly, I feel like a monster. Nothing has ever made me feel suicidal before. But this has pushed me very close to the edge. I can’t understand how I could be wanting to leave a relationship/this new life when on paper I have everything I ever wanted. On the other hand I feel properly like myself for the first time since I was about 18. (We are currently living separately.) I just can't see a future.

Why all of a sudden does the life I’d planned feel like it would mean the end of me as a person? Do I just need to grow up? Advice, other perspectives, challenging questioning all appreciated. If I can't respond straight away I will as soon as I can.

OP - it sounds to me like you have been carrying a fantasy of your ideal life for a long time. Now you ara having to deal with the reality you are panicking. You may or may not be depressed but I think the panic is perfectly normal. But most people will take a deep breath and just get on with it. Life with a family will be different from being a child free student/academic. But no worse. You will have to relinquish control to a certain degree but that is what adulthood involves.

I also think you have a moral obligation to stay involved with and support your child and possibly ex wife (and perhaps she wouldn't have you back after this stunt). It is good you are getting counselling but you need to face up to your responsibilities on the meantime. This is very difficult if you are depresses but people do manage it. And if you can't the I think you may need medication to assist.

Thank you aliceinwanderland - good advice. I absolutely would be staying involved with and supporting both my partner and the baby, whatever happens. I understand that I have already made a lifelong commitment here. And I have by no means left for good.

I wouldn't stay. You don't sound like you want to be there and it seems you all know that. I'm not totally convinced your wife would have you back anyway - you'd both be settling - but you'll clearly be waiting until the child is a bit older and then you'll leave. None of you will be happy.

It's a shame that it took someone else to show you that this wasn't love (although you may have a type of love), and that it's pregnancy that has shown you how much you don't want this. It's especially cruel to your DW, who wanted to leave before, and who is now pregnant. Staying doesn't make it any less cruel, though. You can't fix it for her now.

You probably need to sit down with your DW and talk practicalities. What happens now? The daily contact probably is helping either of you, it gives you both hope, and whilst you'll probably know that's not the right thing, it's comforting anyway and stops you processing things.

I wouldn't want anyone to stay with me because I was pregnant or had a child. Most people wouldn't. She is very vulnerable at the moment and it might feel like a safer plan because it's familiar, but you're both being short changed.

The judgement, if it happens, is something you'll have to cope with. Your benefit is that you can go and find actual happiness, and your next relationship should be less codependent because you have your family so you won't be clinging to bad relationships just to avoid being alone. You can find happiness, and so can your DW. You both deserve better than to be tolerated because it's familiar.

You're probably best to admit that this is done, and make the cut quickly. Don't procrastinate - you've both caused enough damage by shying away from scary decisions - and don't prolong the agony. Once it's done, you can both start healing, at least. Until then, you're both in a painful limbo.

I think you need to try and work out what this is all about and where it's coming from and therefore whether it needs as much action and space as you're currently giving it.

I'm 37 weeks pregnant with out third (planned, discussed, very much wanted child). I'd say that both my DH and I have had some sort of freak out with each one, at different points. In his case, with our first, I didn't really know the scale of the freakout until it was passed, but saw him withdrawing from me and worried about it. He was trying to absorb and deal with that freakout by himself without putting it on me. Only once he was through it a bit was he able to talk about it more. The next time we talked about it more but he was much more aware that it was an upcoming-baby-freakout and would be likely to pass.

When I talked to close friends with children later (we were the first amongst our closer friends to have kids) I realise it is common but not something people talk about very much. I've certainly had my own minor freakouts with each one and am having a minor one now about every relationship in our household inevitably being slightly re-drawn once this baby is here and whether there'll be enough of me and my time to go around all 3, especially at the beginning.

The sibling grief thing is definitely something you live out with a baby. My only sibling died 2 years before our first baby was born, in his late twenties. I was an anxious and hyper-vigilant new mum, constantly disturbed by intrusive imaginings about all the ways our baby might die any day during her infancy. I'd barely sleep the night before we ever took a long journey, seeing the car-crash that killed her again and again. It was another stage of working through my grief that I didn't clock until later. I didn't feel this way at all with number 2. My guess is that part of your freakout is about unresolved grief. And in bear-hunt style, there isn't anyway around it, you have to go through it.

Be careful of the damage you're doing right now. You're dwelling on feeling like a 'settled' choice for your partner a long time ago, not in your recent history. Is that a fair emphasis, given the years SINCE 5-7 in your relationship and her decision to become a parent with you and marry you? Or is it a justification of how you're feeling? She needs your support. She may well be feeling like utter crap because of the pregnancy, never mind feeling abandoned, alone, and angry with you. It may be that continuing the separation and not dealing with your shit together is denting any chance at a future you may have together - which would be a fairly passive way for you to have let this relationship fail by your indecision.

Any yes, I'm sure in the midst of this that someone new, footloose, exciting looks like a great prospect. Ask yourself how real it is. (And it may help you to know that the two life points when married men are most likely to have an affair is 1. while their wife is pregnant or they have a child under 1 and 2. coming up through retirement and the identity issues that brings). Maybe you need to deal with all this in a less damaging way and have faith in the decision you made together, if your wife can still trust you enough to be able to be there.

Also aliceinwanderland - "carrying a fantasy of your ideal life" is right, thanks for articulating that.

Thanks for differing viewpoint, AnchorDownDeepBreath.

And chaosagain, brilliant analysis. You are spot on with having to go through grief, bear-hunt style. I am in the middle of that right now and it is painful but necessary. In my case it is nearly 20 years after the fact. I also really take on board what you are saying about the damage I'm currently causing and whether there is a way back from that. Yes, perhaps it is unfair to dwell on things that have happened in the past - for whatever reason I didn't allow myself to feel unsure at the time and I think because of the grief stuff/allowing all kinds of painful feelings, all my past hurts and insecurities in the relationship are coming up now to complicate things. But that may not be a true reflection of the relationship I am in, as it is currently constituted. I also totally agree that the infatuation is very likely not to be real at all.

I think the reason you may be dealing with it 20 years after the fact is BECAUSE you're facing the prospect of parenthood - it forces all sorts of weird re-evaluations and unresolved stuff on you (stuff about how you were parented, your now relationship with parents etc). The trick is recognising what you need to deal with from within your partnership or not and what it really means. Go slowly and carefully, if it's not to late or too difficult for you and your wife to work it through together.

I'm forever grateful that mr chaos, while seeing my hypervigilance as illogical and unnecessary (and slightly off the wall), was able to 'hold me' in that space because he recognised where it came from and had been there with me through my brother's death (and always offered to drive on long journeys since I was more sleep deprived that usual!). I'm also sure that part of my drive to have a third child is about grief - should we lose one of our children we don't make the other an only child - reflecting something I've really struggled with.

If I'm completely honest I've also had a version of your 'Miss Amazing prospect'. He and I acknowledged our attraction to each other many years ago (while mr chaos and I were together but before we had kids or were married). We all have lots of mutual friends from university days. I keep the hell away from him unless it's unavoidable (e.g.weddings). He lives a completely different life to us, works internationally, splits each year between 3 or 4 places, is never committed to anything (or anyone) for very long. Seeing him spins my head, sometimes for months, but it had the largest effect not long after I'd settled down and become a parent.

I have always known that most of the attraction is just fantasy on my part about an alternate reality. My DH is the one for me, I've always loved him madly and he's my favourite (adult) person in the world. After nearly 9 years of feeling this way about the other guy, I was finally cured of my crush when I listened to a woman/friend from the same wider group talk about how badly he'd treated her over a short-term relationship they'd had. All of my fantasy world about him just evaporated..

Just be very wary of why you're feeling what you're feeling and how much your life with your wife and future child is really worth.

Thank you