My heart is breaking - 20 wks pg with #3 and DH says he doesn’t love me the same anymore

[Showmethecake]

We’ve been together for 15 years, married for 5 and have 2 small DC (4 and 2). Baby #3 on the way - a surprise and I was very confused how I felt about it at first but now a wanted baby.

DH didn’t want a 3rd child and I suspect blames me for it. He hasn’t really connected with the pregnancy and has seemed distant. We haven’t talked about names, he hasn’t asked how I am feeling etc. 20 wk scan is on Monday but now everything is crashing down around me.

DH has been very anxious, stressed with work and generally snappy with us all for a couple of months. We’re looking to buy a house so I put it down to that but on Monday he told me he thought he was having a midlife crisis and that everything was crashing down in his head.

We had a chat but it was as though he has shut down and the real DH has gone. He said he just can’t work out things in his head. He saw a counsellor yesterday and we had a very emotional conversation where he eventually said he doesn’t love me the same anymore.

He said he can’t imagine not seeing the DS everyday and that he’ll love the baby when it’s born and always be here for us.

I feel like my heart has been ripped out.

Can anyone give me hope that this could be a blip (albeit a rather large one!) and maybe be does still love me but is too depressed to see?

OP, he has to see a doctor. It is not on for him to keep piling this misery on you. It sounds as if he is suffering from depression, but he has absolutely no right to leave it untreated, because he is harming you and the children.

Is there a friend or relative he'll listen to, who can influence him? Or maybe who could listen to him, and help move him on from this stuck place, preferably to get professional help.

It is absolutely not your responsibility. But someone else may be able to break the deadlock.

Sadly life has made me cynical and my experiences lead me to think this is all because he’s having an affair or has someone lined up for an affair. I hope I’m wrong. Please take care of yourself and the children foremost OP.

Some posters on here are making it sound like it's a choice to have depression. Do they think people with depression should "just pull themselves together", because that's what it sounds like.

Yes, if they’re men, they are self indulgent twats indulging in depression and just need to shape up or ship out; women, however, have genuine depression...

I am glad I am not a man when it comes to mental health

BaolFan Sat 29-Feb-20 07:43:02

Agree with you 100%.

Take a big step back and don't enable him. At the moment he's got you running round after him, treading on eggshells and desperately trying to fix things. It's not up to you to fix anything. As an adult he has the responsibility for his welfare and feelings and he needs to take ownership. And that includes if he is depressed - he needs to book to see a Doctor to explore medication, he needs to find a counsellor and book appointments, he needs to make sure that his diet and exercise are good.

In the meantime be kind to yourself.

Being depressed is not a get out of jail free card that allows him to throw you in at the deep end with emotions he allegedly kept to himself for several years, or to guilt you about the baby he is just as responsible for as you are.

Again from BaolFan Feb-20 07:43:02
OP He said he should stay and be unhappy to make everyone else happy which obviously I wouldn’t want.

This is very telling. It's highly manipulative and a really unpleasant thing to say. It's putting it all on you - you ask him to stay and it makes you responsible for him being unhappy. Or you tell him to go, in which case he tells everyone that you gave him permission to leave so it's fine to go.

In your shoes I would withdraw from him. You are pregnant with two young children so your priority has to be them and your health.
This is spot on.

I agree with all those suggesting to you that there may be more to this than a mid life crisis or mental health issue on his part.

I would wonder about his Plan B as far as accommodation goes because he seems to have considered the idea that he will leave and miss the boys, and I would be curious about plans he may be cooking. I would wonder whether he is gay too, sorry to say, if sex has been sporadic and he has talked about not loving you the same way any more. It's less likely but not impossible.

I’ve told him that he can stay in the house this week but I can’t go on pretending that everything is fine. He can’t stay with me but not love me.

Absolutely this . He's started the ball rolling, so he needs to follow through, not keep you in limbo.

I'm afraid my first thought was affair like so many others. I know you've asked him and you're sure its not that. But read back some of the threads on here and 99% of times when they're first confronted they say there's nobody else. Its all about maintaining appearances, they don't want to be the bad guy.

Please be prepared - he'll move out and within a couple of months will have 'met' his soulmate. It happened to someone in my family, Poor girl was breaking her heart wondering how things had gone so wrong and begging him to stay. He left her. Came back again for "one last try", left again and within a few weeks was living with a new woman, his absolute soulmate apparently, whom he married and had DCs with shortly afterwards.

Coincidentally someone from work he'd met a year or so before the break up but definitely hadn't done anything with. It was so obvious she'd been waiting in the wings for him to leave his wife - must have been so pissed off when he went back to her!

Many years later they still maintain the myth that it all just 'happened' after he'd blown his family apart for seemingly no reason. Men don't leave their wives with no sign of problems for no reason. There's nearly always another woman.

The rewriting of history to make his unhappiness your fault is a classic tactic too. If he hadn't wanted your DCs, he knows how they're made, he could have prevented pregnancies very easily.

Whatever the outcome, at the moment, you need space to think and you both need time to experience the loss of this marriage so that you know whether its worth fighting for. DO NOT let him get away with living his carefree single life while you facilitate it.

Too many men (my XH included) have got away with this shit, being a Disney dad while the mum slaves away doing all the childcare and continuing to take on the mental load for the family.

Make it clear that his new life will include doing his fair share of family organisation and childcare juggling. When I first split with XH I couldn't bear to be apart from the DCs but now I wish I'd insisted on a fairer split as it has hampered my employment prospects and added a complication to my new relationship, while he is free to chase the money and has all the free time he could wish for.

The new single life he's imagining needs to involve his DCs at least 2 nights a week. Try and put your business head on and get organised - come up with a schedule, work out how much maintenance he'll be paying you, make sure you're in a strong position re work and income, house stuff etc

Go to the scan on your own, or take your mum/sister for support, don't bother reminding him or telling him how it went. You can casually drop it into conversation in a week or so, to give him a taste of what it feels like, being excluded from family life.

This won't be fixed by you begging or pleading or doing the 'pick me' dance (even without another woman as competition, if the pick me dance is between being with you or being fancy free, your desperation will just push him further away.) Your best bet for either separation or reconciliation is to start to build your life away from him, show him that you're ok without him, that you won't fall apart, you'll be fine and strong and resilient (even if you don't feel that way, act like you do!).

Either it will freak him out and he'll realise what a great woman he's walking away from, or you'll start to believe it and pretty soon will be feeling the same way you're acting.

I know its hard when that's the last thing you feel like doing, but it really is the best way to make it real for both of you.

The more i've read the more it sounds like there's an OW. He is following the script completely - so sorry OP. But I would look further.

I've had a partner with depression. Depression can make the sufferer feel shit so they look round at their life to work out why they feel so shit. And what do they see? Usually their past and present, their partner, family, job and home, because that's what surrounds them and makes up their life. So logically they draw the conclusion that it must be those things which are actually shit and making them feel so bad. It's only when they leave the partner/ home/ job and continue to feel shit that they sometimes realise that actually the problem was inside themselves all along. (ADs made all the difference for my DP.)

But frankly it doesn't matter if he is depressed or not. It doesn't even matter if he's having an affair or not. You can't change how he's thinking. You can't smile it away or talk sense into him. The only thing you can do is look after yourself and your dcs.

It's great you've got your family support. It's great you've told him you can't live with him. Be strong and assertive to protect yourself and kick him out. Prioritise your and the dcs long term happiness which may be without him. So show him you can live a happy life without him. My guess is he will realise when he moves out that actually it wasn't you making him feel like this and he'll beg to come back. But you will be strong enough to choose whether or not that works for you, Good luck

yet another 'depression' turns out to be cheating guilt thread posted just today

It can't be much of a marriage if you're just going to kick him out because there is a problem.
Quite honestly if I was the bloke in this position I'd be having a wobble too. Two children under 4 and another one on the way, I'd have a mental breakdown if it was me having the children. I.could.not.cope. with three kids so young the house must be in perpetual chaos.
Not only that but the loss of a much wanted house and on with renting, that must be a massive blow too.
The answer isn't one person being chucked out it's trying to help each other to come to terms with this massive life change.
At least he hasn't just pissed off leaving you in the shit,

It absolutely does sound like 'the script', rewriting of the history of the relationship because his heart is somewhere else.

So glad your mum and dad have your back, and hope your sister can support you too.

WTAF @madcatladyforever

Condoms are really, really cheap, and designed to be easy to use.

And if he thinks the house is a tip then rubber gloves, the hoover, and even a broom are also easy to use.

FFS I can't believe people are still making excuses for this arsehole.
I've been depressed and I never blamed it all on my DH.
Got annoyed with him about various things, yes, but never rewrote the history of our relationship so that he essentially forced me into everything.
It's utter bullshit.
Depressed people don't do and say this crap.

He said he should stay and be unhappy to make everyone else happy which obviously I wouldn’t want.*

This worries me op. It has all the self-pitying hallmarks of someone who is preparing to leave but doesn't want to look like the bad guy. What a dreadful thing to say. And what a shameless martyr this man is.

That I’ve never been willing to compromise and we’ve always done what I want

If you don't feel this is a fair representation then I suspect someone is giving him attention as rewriting history is common behaviour for affair.

I am so sorry but they often deny and cover their tracks well.

I hope it isn't and distance makes him realise what he will lose. If it is another woman will be very foolish to hook up with a man who has walked out on his wife when the going gets tough.

He sounds like a total manchild OP. Determined to be the victim. Ugh.

I’m so sorry OP. This is classic from The Script

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/relationships/1527705-Midlife-crisis-this-is-the-script

Rewriting history to make you the bad guy imposing your will on your poor downtrodden husband to justify to himself why he’s ok to be resentful

He may be depressed, he may well think his life is passing him by but he has DC so he can’t just sail off into the sunset

And you have to put yourself and the DC first. Hugs xxx

Don’t give him a pass to physically check out of the marriage if you aren’t prepared for it to be permanent. He may want you to do that to make him feel less guilty for leaving if you make the decision for him. I did this on the understanding that my ex would then make an effort to get us back to a good place again by visiting us and working on the relationship. But he packed up his stuff, left and barely made any contact or effort to repair the relationship. Turned out in my situation there was OW, but I appreciate that’s not necessarily the case here.

He's acting as though he had no agency in his own life then blaming it on you! He chose to get married and have children. He could have said no at any point. And now he expects to skip off into the sunset ... What can't he take 2 children with him?

Why is everyone gunning for this marriage to end. NEITHER of them used contraception so they are equally to blame.
It's no joke being a single parent of three kids. How can OP afford childcare?

Being a single mum of one child meant years of robbing Peter to pay Paul and no holidays at all, ever.
Working with three under 5 means being on UK and never owning your own home.
Whereas with two parents if they get their shit together they can still have a good life.
In 5 years time it will all be manageable.
I'd fight for this marriage given the shirty alternative and I'm saying this as someone who doesn't like men and has been divorced twice.
I've been to visit a single mum friend with four kids recently and she has a bloody awful life. She couldn't afford to put the heating on at all this year and the kids were constantly complaining that they were cold and couldn't concentrate on their homework. They live in a mould filled rental and as for another relationship, nobody wants to take on four kids so she's been single and very lonely for years.
Going on about OPS husband not wearing a condom isn't going to pay the bills.

Madcatlady, it’s feminism 101 that you don’t let a man treat you and your unborn children like shit just so you can keep a roof over your head.

There is a thread going at the moment about a wife who gave her husband years of support through his depression.

She has just found out he was actually having an affair the entire time.

He is setting the scene.

It’s not the OP who wants out if the marriage, it’s him

It's no joke being a single parent of three kids. How can OP afford childcare?

If it’s no joke being the single dad of there children, then I’m sure the Ops husband will think very carefully about it, since he’s the one who wants to leave the marriage.

But funnily enough, he doesn’t seem to have thought that through.

I agree, childcare for three children ( including an under 2 ) is going to cost him a lot for the 2.5 working days a week he has the children. I hope he has a well paid job.

And of course, in the unlikely event That there is OW involved, she will be there to help him with the kids and pay the bills.

I do hope the Ops husband isn’t deluded enough to think that he could move in with OW and spend 6 days a week gloriously child free, while popping in to see his kids once a week to pay Disney dad.

As long as he’s not busy that weekend of course. And as long as the kids behave and are suitably grateful and appreciative, not grumpy , sick or whiney. That’s no fun at all.