I have name changed for this as it is very identifying. It will be an exceptionally long post, for which I apologise. If you do have time to read it through or skim it, I would be so grateful for your perspective.
I am pregnant, which has coincided with starting a new job in a new city, and moving in with my partner of ten years (we had not lived together full time before that, for various reasons). The pregnancy was unplanned, but we had talked of trying for a baby in a year or two, and were due to get married next spring (when the baby is now due). I'm late twenties, he is mid thirties. Timing was not ideal at all (my new job etc) but I had always said to him that I would almost certainly keep a child if I fell pregnant, and sex was on those terms.
My partner started off being positive about the pregnancy, but there has been a shift in his behaviour since then. I feel like he is being emotionally abusive and could really do with some outside perspectives. I am just going to list things in roughly chronological order, all within the last couple of months.
I was suffering from hyperemesis and fatigue for the first three months; when he said he was going out to an event for the evening, I said I had hoped we might be able to have night in and that perhaps he would cook something. He made me feel simultaneously that I was boring and self-destructive for not going out, and that I was unreasonable for asking him if he would mind staying in (brief context: this was a one-off thing, when I was feeling particularly exhausted, and he is freelance, working a fewer, flexible hours from home while I am the main earner and have unavoidably long hours). Two days later, he categorically said that he was someone who needed to have his meals cooked for him sometimes (I do do this; before being ill and pregnant it was almost always me).
When we were rushing to catch a bus and I was feeling sick, I didn't say I was feeling sick as I knew he wanted that particular bus and would be annoyed to wait and then miss it; when I said at the bus stop that I felt sick, he said I was "immature" for not having told him before, and then insinuated first that the morning sickness was in my head (or I was playing it up), and then secondly that it was real, but somehow my fault. I said in fact, morning sickness was associated with a lower rate of miscarriage, showing him an article after he said he found that "very hard to believe". His response was, "ah, but that is morning sickness and you are ill all day." (This is symptomatic of the fact he has shown no interest in researching pregnancy, yet is full of opinions.)
I had previously suffered an early miscarriage (his baby), during which I woke up alone in bed in a pool of blood. I said it would mean a lot if he could sleep in the same bed with me in the first weeks (bed is a small double, and he said he was sleeping awfully so wanted to move downstairs; in fact, I've had a bit of insomnia and have heard him snoring for hours). He kept saying it was better for me too to sleep alone and I was just being difficult and getting a fixed idea in my head.
At a friend's wedding, he went off in a strop because he felt I hadn't paid him enough attention/been interested enough in his conversation when we were sitting beside one another at dinner.
At another wedding, he got cross with me, which I later found out was because I had allegedly looked at him "with disgust" after he said something or other to the person he was beside. (I certainly didn't.) This bad mood continued the next day, when we went for an early scan and he showed no emotion and said he did not want to talk about it afterwards.
On a train that evening, I wrote to a friend that the weekend had been difficult as partner was sulking, qualifying this by saying things were no doubt very difficult for him. He saw what I wrote, and when I apologised for upsetting him he said "get away from me; don't touch me" and refused to take a taxi home with me, walking instead.
He said my telling my friend this was a "betrayal of trust" and I was "treating him appallingly". He went out for dinner with a friend of his and the next day quoted what he the friend had said to him: "In whose hands was the contraception?", saying it was a "very interesting point". He also laid into me again about telling my friend, I retreated to the bathroom crying, and he said, "Is this the behaviour of an expectant mother? Maybe a sixteen-year-old one."
The next night I came home to a note on my pillow saying "Going out. Tonight. Might stay out. No need to call police etc." (On another occasion, he'd been out till late without saying anything and when he got back I said I had been worried.)
He was out late all that week, while I was feeling very ill, and on the Friday, when I had friends over, he did not come home at all (without saying he was going to stay out).
On the morning of my booking appointment, I asked if he wanted to come. He said "If you had wanted me to come, you would have told me before." I had told him, put it on noticeboard and put it on Google Calendar. I said that, being positive, should I book a taxi to allow him time to get ready? He eventually said he would come so that I didn't have the opportunity to tell lies about him to a stranger. At the booking appointment, when the midwife asked if I had any serious psychiatric disorders (this is separate from the depression question, which I had answered -- I have suffered from depression in the past), he interjected with "I think there are some undiagnosed ones."
I had previously mentioned I might go to stay with a friend for a couple of weeks to get through to the end of term (teacher); he was out every night, would barely make me a cup of tea, and was just being so negative. At this point he offered to stay in and make dinner, and after doing so added that he would "love to hear" what I say to my friends about him not making me dinner, when in fact he does. He then said that on the advice of a family member, he had decided it was worth talking to me to see if he could change my mind about moving out. This talking to me mainly involved reading out a list of my faults and those of my family, with the occasional, "I'll leave those ones out; I think they would be too devastating for you to hear," culminating in saying that despite all this, he loved me and wanted to fight for this and make it work. He was then all affectionate, but I did move away as planned.
We met up to open the results of a prenatal test together, and at this point he was very emotional and apologetic, saying he could never make things up to me but wanted to try to make things up to our child, and that whenever I was ready to move back, he was ready to try to make things up to me and look after me. I didn't move back at once, but did spend more time with him on weekends. When I asked if he had had a chance to research pregnancy, morning sickness etc, he said he had not and was "not naturally inclined to do so" and maybe I needed to be with somebody "straight-laced" (the implication being, I suppose, that artists such as himself cannot be bogged down with the mundanity of medical facts!). We watched a documentary about pregnancy and childbirth, which I had suggested doing after he had talked about "managing his expectations" concerning the birth (I'm favouring a home birth or one in the Midwife Led Unit), which he had imagined as being "like in the romcoms, with the man supportive while the woman swears at him from the hospital bed". He watched this very grudgingly, and afterwards said he could not relate to any of the people in it and birth should be a private thing.
One Sunday, he said he wanted to make sandwiches for lunch then go to the park. I said could I take him out for a panini, instead of making sandwiches (it was already after 2pm). After eating, I asked if we should go to the park. He said "It's always on your terms; you always get your way." Later, he called me "uptight" for suggesting the baby should have both our surnames (not just his) and said his mother said she had been like me once, and that she hoped I would "grow out of it". Afterwards, I was enthusiastically preparing for a special event at school; he said I was putting too much into it, and when I said I was enjoying it he said "when you give to one part of your life, you are taking from another."
I did eventually move back at the end of term, as planned, and we went out for the evening, with strict instruction from him to focus on us and not talk about the baby. I was getting extremely bad stabbing pains in my stomach and called 111 to check if it could be related to the pregnancy. The next day, he said I had been making sure I was "as in pain as possible". He also complained that since I have been pregnant I have started to "look different". I think this is weight-related but not sure.
When I invited him out to town he came along for a bit and then said he could "picture in his mind" that he was going to have a bad time with me, and left.
This is getting far too long, but in general he is always saying that I am the only reason he is miserable, that I make him miserable, that I have changed, I am not the person he knew, I am the one who is mentally ill. He calls any disagreement a "circular argument" and refuses to engage with it, so it is extremely difficult to move forward. He feels I "abandoned him" by temporarily moving out to get through the last weeks of term. He will say he is not sure he wants the baby (and when the baby was already twelve weeks, and he had known about it for seven, he informed me that he had been considering persuading me to abort it as we would have another chance to have a child [not necessarily true: I have suspected PCOS, as he knows]), that he is resentful of his loss of freedom, that I have been unreasonable in asking him to give up his career (I haven't; as he works part-time on a freelance basis in the arts I had once mentioned there is a lot to be said for a steady income, even if this is just from a job for a couple of days a week; but this was partly as he'd said he was finding it hard to concentrate on his projects because of money worries and the fact his time was taken up with lots of bitty side-jobs here and there). He also says that I am abusive and it would be abusive of me to take the child away from him if I suggest we could be be better apart.
I'm currently visiting family, and on the phone today, after he had said within five minutes I had made him miserable after he had been joyfully happy for days, and I again said maybe we need to think about one of us moving out, he said "I am not going to let you ruin my life, Worried, I'm just not" and hung up.
I feel he is very unwell and needs help, but I don't know how to get him help because he projects it all on me, and says I am the cause of everything that is wrong while simultaneously not wanting to let me go. I find a lot of what he has said and done extremely hateful, feel gaslighted, and do not see how I can stay with him. But I am worried about being a single parent, and sad and in shock, because I have loved him so much and although the last years were not without problems, there had been nothing like this.
Has anyone been in a similar situation? What is the best thing to do? We are tied into a rental contract together for several months. I am the main earner but will only qualify for Maternity Allowance once I go on leave, as I was already pregnant when I started my job. I had been relying on either his financial support while I was on maternity leave, or on his support with childcare if I went back to work sooner.