Partner ended engagement at 22 weeks pregnant and now will not speak

[CharlieBrown123]

I am 22 weeks pregnant and my partner broke up with me a few days ago and now won’t talk to me.

We met in December, and the pregnancy was a complete accident - when I found out I was pregnant I felt really upset as I wasn’t sure how a termination would affect me emotionally, but after talking it through with him he was really keen to support me and for us to have the baby together despite only having known each other a short time.

I was invited to move into his house and we started going to all the appointments together, he would cry at scans saying I was his forever person and he was so excited to have a family with me. He proposed and the wedding was set for the 1st July so that we’d be married before the baby came along. A couple of weeks ago he took me to Norway to meet his family and nephews who were so excited to have a new cousin.

We did sometimes argue, well it was more a case of me just randomly crying, particularly in the first trimester, but I was assured this was a normal part of pregnancy and he was generally supportive.

On Wednesday, on our morning dog walk and quite out of the blue he broke off the engagement, he then told me I had to leave the house that day. When I tried to have a conversation about how I could survive financially through maternity leave he said he would not be providing support as he would get lawyers involved to ensure he had 50/50 custody. I have barely heard from him since apart from a few messages about arranging to have my belongings delivered back to my flat.

I have sought the advice of a solicitor and now know what my rights are, and a lovely lady at universal credit helped me understand how to support myself through maternity leave so I know that from a financial and legal perspective, everything will be fine. Emotionally I am still so shocked and confused by his behaviour, and not sure how someone can go from one day saying how becoming a family is the best thing that’s ever happened to them, to the next not even wanting to know me.

Has anyone else experienced anything similar? Does pregnancy sometimes have this effect on men? I really feel like I need some answers but I know I won’t get them from him.

You don’t have to be tied to this man. Just move away and tell him you aren’t keeping the baby. He’s obviously pulled the wool over your eyes as lots of men do and is not a good man so fuck him.

Personally I would say that an abortion is the default if you find yourself pregnant to someone you barely know, because those relationships pretty much never work. You are where you are. I would block him on everything and don't put him on the BC. hopefully he'll lose interest.

As he should, he is the child's Father and that child has a right to a relationship with their parents.
The child is not a tool to use for revenge ffs.

Breastfeed. Be very careful with passports and paperwork as it sounds like he’s Norwegian? Even though it’s an European country, you don’t want to find yourself in a mess in a few years’ time when he holds the child’s Norwegian passport and can take him/her out of the country during his contact time.

He cannot have 50/50 until the child is much older. Stick to your guns, don’t make concessions for him. What was his plan, go part-time so he can take care of a newborn and confuse the hell out of a baby by changing their primary care giver every few days? Does he know what babies actually need?

How did you feel meeting his family? Is this change coming from him or from relatives pressuring him to “uphold his rights”?

This isn’t right though. If you break up with a pregnant woman, the consequences are youre told the baby was terminated at near-viability, and youre denied a relationship? There was no abuse here, they jusy broke up. It’s wrong

She isn’t using the baby as a weapon! He is doing this by saying he’ll take a newborn 50 percent of the time just to avoid paying her CM!!! He doesn’t give a shit about what is in the best interests of a newborn baby because it certainly is not to be away from its mother 50 percent of the time!

This is a very personal choice. Some of us wouldn’t terminate the pregnancy, but also wouldn’t be rushing to be in a relationship with the stranger. I’d be staying in my own home and getting to know the man slowly. Maybe one day we’ll move in together and be a united family, maybe not. They don’t show you their true colours until later - that doesn’t mean you can’t maintain your independence and thread very carefully.

How is it weaponising the child? He wants access, he goes through the appropriate routes. OP started the conversation discussing maintenance and it was shut down. He made it clear he wants to go through lawyers, OP is not bound to make his life easier. He has chosen this path, it’s his to walk.

Yep!
There is a huge gulf between termination and moving in immediately, getting married within 7 months and selling your house and becoming financially entangled with a virtual stranger...

You’re in a tricky position as he’s a foreign national. Get legal advice. In the future he might apply for a dual passport. My friend is Swedish and her English born children have one.

Congratulations on your pregnancy 💛 wishing you a lovely future for you and your baby

He’s about to attempt to take a newborn baby away from its mother just so he doesn’t pay child maintenance. The way that he’s treating her right now is abusive. He’s going to be getting lawyers involved and it will be hell. He’s also foreign and could take the baby and not return it. I know what I’d be doing in this situation. I’d be gone asap.

He can take her to court to be added to the BC and still get away with not paying any maintenance you know?! They’re not linked.

OP put a CMS claim in as soon as the baby is born and please make sure your baby has your last name when you register it. It will at birth, the hospital will create its medical ID and revised as Baby Girl / Boy YourLastName as babies always have their mothers last name.

dont let him insist on his last name because “it’s traditional”. traditionally, the parents were married and the woman had changed her name. So baby had the same last name as dad coincidentally because that was the mothers last name.

Sorry this had happened to you

What a draconian and bitter outlook, and way to go attacking a woman who is 22 weeks pregnant.

My mum accidentally got pregnant by my dad a few months into their relationship, did the whole shotgun wedding - they are still married 55 years later.

OP’s got her head screwed on.

I think obviously with hindsight this would have been the best course of action. I didn’t do this, maybe because I’d never really thought about having children and just sort of the standard template you think of for family life is that you all live together and are married, when he suggested it it just sort of made sense to me. It might be because I am autistic so like to have things set up in a sort of procedural way.

Whether I have behaved recklessly or not, there’s nothing I can do about it now, I’m just appreciating the guidance on steps to take going forward.

Causing stress or uncertainty isn’t abuse and it definitely doesn’t justify telling him the baby is now died, so sorry, you won’t be seeing it ever. He won’t be getting his 50/50 now anyway.

Just to reassure you a little on this front: it is pretty difficult at the moment to get a Norwegian passport if you're not actually in Norway. And the Norwegian child passports expire every 2 years. I think it's unlikely he'll go down this route without you knowing about it.

Draconian and bitter is better than homeless, penniless and jobless with a baby which many women end up because they trusted the wrong man.
Your mother was lucky.

Congratulations! Also part of me wants to say you’ve had a lucky escape as your ex doesn’t sound like someone to spend any more time with! 50/50 from birth - he and his lawyer have got to be kidding (and I assume just want to put you off claiming child maintenance!)! Can’t see any court allowing a breastfeeding new born joint custody! Enjoy motherhood 💐

OP has already said she has a good job, house and is stable. Why are you persisting in berating her choice and denigrating her experience?

Unless things have changed in 11 years then it’s not possible to put the father’s name on the birth certificate unless you are married, or if unmarried the father is present at the appointment. So many posters say not to put the father on but you can’t do it anyway unless married or they are with you. Being on the BC doesn’t affect maintenance. DS’s father refused to attend. We weren’t married. He paid maintenance via the CMS. He’s now dead and ds has his dependant’s pension and death benefit despite his father not being on the birth certificate.

OP mentioned can be such shits and I’m sorry you’re in this position. You’ll be fine and probably better off on your own. I found it easier alone with ds and 2 dds than with my useless ex-husband when we had the dds. 50/50 is not going to happen with newborn and id be surprised if he wants contact at all. I informed my ex that Ds had been born and sent a photo. No response. He saw him once as a baby then never again until Ds saw his coffin. Keep all messages between you. Print them out if you can. You never know when you might them. I wish you all
the best.

I think that, apart from the obvious avoidant personality issues, he is quite clearly also a sadist. He love-bombed you, gave you the impression that you were getting married and starting a family, and then, when it was too late to have a termination, he left you. Not only did he leave you, but he told you that you had to move out that very day. Even a lodger would normally be given four weeks' notice. His behaviour is so extreme that it is clinically diagnosable.
Do not let a sadist have contact with your child. Do not put him on the birth certificate; let him fight for it if he wants it. And if he does pursue contact, fight him at every corner.
I don't think he will pursue contact if you don't pursue CMS, and for a couple of hundred pounds per month it is not worth exposing a little toddler to a sadist. He will take pleasure in hurting your child just as he did with you. Don't let him.

It takes two to make a baby but keeping the baby, moving in with a man you'd known a few months and putting your home on the market were all separate decisions you made. Your ex deserves criticism for his apparent U-turn, but you seem to be dismissing any discussion of your own choices as misogyny or criticism of single mothers. The reality is that both things can be true, he has behaved badly, and you made some remarkably foolish decisions based on trust in someone you barely knew.

Such an unnecessarily harsh post. I know women who got pregnant really quickly, early on in a new relationship. The pregnancy prompted them to move quicker with their relationship than they would have otherwise done.

One couple is still together, happy and with a second child. Another couple had since split and started new relationships. In neither case did the male partner do what OPs ex partner has done, which is to behave incredibly cruelly and utterly blindside her.

OP’s response to her situation is relatively common. Posters need to get off her back!