Hello everyone — sorry for the long post.
I’m writing because over the past few weeks I’ve completely lost the ground beneath my feet, and I honestly want to know whether other women have experienced something like this during pregnancy — or whether I need to slowly accept that this is permanently over for us.
My partner (29) and I (36) have been together for over 11 years. We’re expecting our first child and we’re currently at 34 weeks. She’s been on work restrictions/medical leave since then. Early in the pregnancy she often felt unwell, spent a lot of time in bed and sleeping, and I took over quite a bit — I cared for her and got her whatever she needed. We were emotionally very close. She repeatedly told me that she loved me and how excited she was for the baby. Whenever she felt able to, and after we found out the sex, she would shop for baby clothes and was genuinely happy and excited.
As she started feeling better, she spent more time on the PC again and later returned to gaming/online life (that’s actually how we met back then). For quite a while after that, we were still very close. We had a very active sex life and tried a lot of things — always with the focus that both of us would enjoy it and reach orgasm.
Then the break happened (mid/late November): she met someone online (from another country, roughly 1,300 km away as the crow flies). Since then she has gradually become colder toward me, step by step. She said that what she feels with him is “new and exciting,” and that she’s confused about whether it’s just a crush or something more. At the same time, she says her feelings for me are more platonic, and that our relationship hasn’t felt the same for a longer time. She never expressed any of this before — but now she’s convinced it must have been true, because otherwise she “couldn’t have developed a crush” on someone else.
What makes it even harder: since then she seems extremely emotionally unstable and inconsistent. Sometimes she’s angry, irritable, and rejecting — then she gets sentimental, thinks about her childhood, sends baby videos, talks about the baby, plans little things — and in the next moment she’s ice-cold again or emotionally “gone.” Physical closeness is difficult; sometimes it works briefly, but as soon as it gets emotionally “too close,” she shuts down. On top of that, she has strong fears (about birth and becoming a mother), a worryingly low self-esteem, and what seems like a difficult childhood — at least that’s how it looks from my perspective.
After an argument, we’ve been basically separated since early January, but we still live together (because of the pregnancy and reality). Most of the time we stay in separate rooms — except when sleeping, because we still share a bed.
And this is what is tearing me apart: on the one hand she still relies on me in everyday life and messages me a lot, but emotionally it feels like I’ve become some kind of “safe base,” while her romantic feelings are directed elsewhere. Sometimes she talks about “if we end up living separately…” as if it’s already decided — and then she says again, “we’ll see what happens, nothing is decided,” or “maybe it’s all just pregnancy stress.”
To be honest: for a while I was at the end of my rope. I slept badly, somehow functioned during the day, and in the evenings everything would crash down on me. I’m doing a bit better now, because I’m getting therapeutic support and I’m taking an antidepressant, among other things. I want to be there for my child, and I don’t want to beg or control her — but I’m also afraid of sacrificing myself completely and ending up losing everything anyway.
On top of that, since this week we have to be even more careful because her cervix has already opened a bit, and we were told to take it easy — even though from this point on they generally wouldn’t try to stop labor anymore.
So my questions to you — especially to women who have been pregnant or are pregnant right now:
- Can hormones/pregnancy stress/anxiety really be so strong that love feels like it “disappears” or completely flips?
- Has anyone experienced becoming suddenly emotionally distant during pregnancy — or even getting fixated on someone else — and then things became clearer/different after birth?
- Can it happen that, looking back, you try to explain changed feelings during pregnancy and end up “inventing false facts” to make it fit?
- Or is this usually a sign that the relationship is basically already over and pregnancy just accelerated it?
- How should I approach her and treat her while we’re also becoming parents?
I’m not looking for someone to blame. I’m looking for orientation — and for an honest answer about whether I’m allowed to have hope, or whether I should start preparing myself emotionally for a permanent separation.