Husband left me 3 months pregnant...

[Piano]

I am so sorry this is happening to you. I know your pain, and wish I could take it away. I also want my husband and my life back, not a best friend (which is what he is also pushing for today). My story is a bit different from yours, and I am a few months ahead of you in the pregnancy, with only 2.5 months to go before my baby girl is born. I think the more time you have, the better.

Here's my story (fyi, my thread is '6 months pregnant and husband involved in PA')........

I am 35 and am 6 months pregnant, and my husband (39) left me 3 days after touching down in the country at Xmas, saying he ‘loved me but was not in love with me anymore’, that he’d had an affair (someone we’ve known a long time) and he was still in love with her. I couldn’t believe it. I told him in no uncertain terms, to leave.

This all followed 3 months of us being forced to live apart as we transitioned back from Europe (where he comes from and where we just lived for 2 great – I thought- years) to the Southern Hemisphere (where I am from and where we have lived for most of the 15 years we have been together – 13 of those married). We’ve lived separately since the announcement (bar the first two days) – me at my parents, where I was still ‘camping’ until we got re-established on his return; he’s staying with mutual friends.

His announcement came totally out of the blue, no warning signs. Okay, he was not the happiest person on earth, but our life was stressful (his job was all-demanding, me having difficulty finding work, hard time getting pregnant – needed treatment, he had an MS scare, etc etc) and moving countries is very stressful, and I think I just put any problems down to that. But he says he has had doubts and denied been unhappy (out of love) with me for years, but it’s all bubbled to the surface now and needs to be true to himself and not stay in a relationship out of guilt or to please me or others – even if there is a soon-to-be child involved. He said in a recent (our first) co-parenting therapy session, initiated by me, that he thought ours had been a relationship of “co-dependency”. Weeks before he had said things like “What we had was beautiful and true, but it’s now gone”.

I have experienced the usual stages of grief and shock, disbelief and denial. Everyone around us was also so shocked, our families most of all, and thought he was having a nervous breakdown. I tried to argue with him, convince him his feelings must be deceiving him, I fought him. I also did the opposite. I counselled him, comforted him, supported him. Over the first 6 or so weeks, during the scarce face-to-face contact we had, all of this pushed him further away -from being 99% sure we were over, to him being 100 % sure.

While I think I did rely on him too much, we never addressed this as a couple, in order to strengthen the marriage and move on. And now he won’t give me the chance (he’s not interested in giving it a go at all) and says there is no point going over what was wrong with the relationship and that sometimes there are no explanations. It would only create more hurt. But I am the sort of person that requires explanations... I don’t know how to handle being loved one minute, dropped the next. It’s too shocking and ungraspable.

I realise now that we clearly had different essential values, which becoming a parent has brought to the surface. He is looking for work interstate so doesn’t plan to be around for the day to day stuff. And he has said adamantly that he will return to Europe to live eventually – no timeframe given. So I can’t even plan on him being around to help me with the task in any substantial way (although financially he will put in). His father abandoned him at birth, and growing up without a father (in any ‘traditional’ sense) is normal to him and he sees no problem in leaving that as a legacy for his own child. We didn’t have an unplanned pregnancy. After a year of trying, we were successful after the first round of fertility treatment. We were happy!

Today he wants to establish good relations with me, remain best friends, so we can co-parent. He is saying all the time “I love this child and I will be its father”. But it seems incongruous with my idea of what a loving father should be doing – first, not abandoning his 15 year relationship overnight (who does that?), and two, being responsible parent (ie. one who parents, not one who leaves!).

As for his affair, although I think it has played a huge role in his decisions (he talked early on in wanting to be “in love” and not settling for less – nor wanting me to settle for less, for that matter) in the first month or so since his arrival, I think the un-likelinhood of it going any further (given she lives on the other side of the world and that their affair has been exposed to everyone close to us – by him, myself and the gossip mill) is draining energy from it. I think he was holding on to the ‘high’ it was giving him – today he seems more depressed, so I’d say hopes of it blossuming are fading.

I am finding it very hard to handle the reality of the situation and moving forward. I want to do everything possible to make it up with him in the hope he comes back, and at the same time think it would be better if I never saw him again (so hard for me even to write..). Opposite extremes. Making it hard for me to move forward with my life. Sometimes I think and tell him that I would rather he leave now and let me do this job of bringing up a baby alone without him, the next day I invite him to Drs appointments and classes etc in the hope it will trigger an awareness of the situation (to which he comes, providing he is around and providing I agree to keep it calm). He seems to be lost in a ‘fantasy’ idea – once it was vis-a-vis the woman he was having an affair with, and today it’s the child.

The last time I saw him, I was crushed to see him looking pale and drained. I still love him so much. I think he is very isolated, and lonely, as his main support networks are 10,00-kms away, and he no longer really has my family or friends. But nonetheless determined to go forward with his plan - it's what he says he wants, after all.

Everyone tells me to move forward without any expectations that he will come back, and to look after me and the baby. I do try. But my love for him, and perhaps my hormones, are driving me to want our family-unit to be together. I am also getting very tired of people saying “it’s very important you let him have a relationship with the baby and make it a good one” - I just feel like I am erased in that equation...like an incubator - not a person with feelings and needs.

I come from a ‘model’ divorced family (my parents and step-parents are all friends and did their best to put personal gripes aside – it wasn’t easy, but it was way better than most), so I know how important it is to think what is best for the kids. But in this situation, I don’t seem capable at this stage in my grief to place the baby before me (though I try and succeed occasionally). I just want him back. And don’t know how to do it.