Post by Veritee on Apr 1, 2006 22:00:43 GMT
Well at least the doors are still open and you have asked her whether she still is depressed.
Well I have thought about this a lot tonight........
First I was thinking about what you said about her being worried about having her child taken away or something happening to her and making plans for you to look after him is anything did .
This does sound like PNI as so many of us do feel like this and even make plans for who will look after our children if we can't.
And often these fears are based on things we do not tell others i.e thoughts that we may be ashamed or too worried to tell anyone about .
But unfortunately even is this is the case unless she feels she has PNI and wants to get treatment for it there is little you can do about this
( we call it PNI and not PND as we feel/know the symptoms may include depression but they are a lot more complicated than depression only)
But mostly I was also thinking about her giving her reasons for the split as because you were not interested in the bump..
This was very interesting to me as even though my husband and I have been together more than 20 years and when I was pregnant with our baby for at least 5 this in fact was one of the major problems we faced!!!!!
My husband Barry was absolutely and completely disinterested in my bump and the pregnancy -
Hurtfully most of my friends showed more interest than him and in fact he never once felt our daughter kick as he simply was not interested enough to keep his hand their long enough.
So as someone who has been through this lack of interest too..............................
I have to say that while Barry and I are still together and probably now always will be - this for me was one of the hardest things for me to forgive - ever!!!!!
And I did make Barry jump through hoops because of it and I was very angry for a long, long time .
Obviously there must have been a reason why he reacted like this to the pregnancy of someone he loved with his child and someone he had been with quite a while and wanted to stay with - just as you must have a reason - but it still made me very angry and might have contributed to how I felt after the birth.
I think that the fact he was like this might have made me leave him if we had not been together so long - so I have to say that while this may seem in the past to you I can very much see how your lack of interest when she was pregnant could easily be a very real reason for not wanting to be with you now.
I do not know fully why my husband was like this, I do not think he does really - as 17 years later he is a different man ( we are now in our 50s ) a man who is a great dad and a lovely husband has cared for me so well through my recent disability
but when I was pregnant he was very different and at times I hated him for it as it was so important that this thing ( pregnancy ) I was going through that he valued it too and shared it with me - but he did not and I felt very alone.
I think some of the reasons he was so detached was in the area of fear of the responsibility or about how it would change our relationship? Or maybe because having never had a child before it just did not seem real to him but because I was carrying the baby it was very real to me.
Once our baby was born he gradually changed when he realized what this brought to our lives and that our baby was very real...
and I know if we had ever had a second chance and had another baby his attitude the second time around would have been very different - but due to my infertility we never had another chance!!!
but I was left with acute resentment and anger at the way he had cut off when I was pregnant from this huge thing in our lives - for me this was a once in a lifetime occurrence and I was aware that it might be my last pregnancy at the time and only birth - so it was so very important and it should have been to him too!!!!
Well thats my story - I am still with Barry and it great now but it has been rocky at times .
All I can suggest if the reason your gf gives for splitting up has its root in your lack of interest in the pregnancy - perhaps the way forward is to acknowledge what a BIG thing this was for her -
that this was a very hurtful thing for her and that you do now understand this and try to understand why .
Perhaps you could try to understand why you were cut off form the pregnancy - what was it that was happening for you as while this does happen to some like my husband also - many men have the opposite reaction. In my case even my Male friends were more interested than Barry.
Perhaps this has left your gf like me worried to trust you emotionally ?
You say that you were so overjoyed when she moved int a flat closer to you - you said you were:
It strikes me that this was how you 'should' have felt about the pregnancy ...
perhaps she did not know if she could trust you emotionally when she realized you were now so happy at the prospect of becoming a family yet when she would have expected you to feel like this and wanted you to feel like this i.e when she was pregnant - you did not ( I hope you understand what I mean)
Anyway having gone through something similar I thought I would say what I thought about it.
Barry, my husband is a merchant seaman currently away at sea but if he was not I would probably have asked him to write to you about his side of it - why he was so unable to feel involved when I was pregnant and why he practically ignored my pregnancy and hut me so much and how this has been repaired over a long period but never really forgotten.
I know we can not change the past but I could only trust Barry again emotionally when he really did realize what a big thing it had been to me when he showed no interest in my bump and how deeply he had hurt me.
he had to make it very clear that he was sorry and he regretted it - and explain a bit about why he did this hurtful thing to me.
Your situation is probably very different to mine - but this is all I can suggest as a way forward as you seem to want so much to try
so my only suggestion is that it seems important for you to acknowledge what she it telling you -
that how you were when she was pregnant is pretty much unforgivable to her ( it pro baby always was but sometimes it takes time to realize how hurt by something you are)
all the best
Veritee
Well I have thought about this a lot tonight........
First I was thinking about what you said about her being worried about having her child taken away or something happening to her and making plans for you to look after him is anything did .
This does sound like PNI as so many of us do feel like this and even make plans for who will look after our children if we can't.
And often these fears are based on things we do not tell others i.e thoughts that we may be ashamed or too worried to tell anyone about .
But unfortunately even is this is the case unless she feels she has PNI and wants to get treatment for it there is little you can do about this
( we call it PNI and not PND as we feel/know the symptoms may include depression but they are a lot more complicated than depression only)
But mostly I was also thinking about her giving her reasons for the split as because you were not interested in the bump..
This was very interesting to me as even though my husband and I have been together more than 20 years and when I was pregnant with our baby for at least 5 this in fact was one of the major problems we faced!!!!!
My husband Barry was absolutely and completely disinterested in my bump and the pregnancy -
Hurtfully most of my friends showed more interest than him and in fact he never once felt our daughter kick as he simply was not interested enough to keep his hand their long enough.
So as someone who has been through this lack of interest too..............................
I have to say that while Barry and I are still together and probably now always will be - this for me was one of the hardest things for me to forgive - ever!!!!!
And I did make Barry jump through hoops because of it and I was very angry for a long, long time .
Obviously there must have been a reason why he reacted like this to the pregnancy of someone he loved with his child and someone he had been with quite a while and wanted to stay with - just as you must have a reason - but it still made me very angry and might have contributed to how I felt after the birth.
I think that the fact he was like this might have made me leave him if we had not been together so long - so I have to say that while this may seem in the past to you I can very much see how your lack of interest when she was pregnant could easily be a very real reason for not wanting to be with you now.
I do not know fully why my husband was like this, I do not think he does really - as 17 years later he is a different man ( we are now in our 50s ) a man who is a great dad and a lovely husband has cared for me so well through my recent disability
but when I was pregnant he was very different and at times I hated him for it as it was so important that this thing ( pregnancy ) I was going through that he valued it too and shared it with me - but he did not and I felt very alone.
I think some of the reasons he was so detached was in the area of fear of the responsibility or about how it would change our relationship? Or maybe because having never had a child before it just did not seem real to him but because I was carrying the baby it was very real to me.
Once our baby was born he gradually changed when he realized what this brought to our lives and that our baby was very real...
and I know if we had ever had a second chance and had another baby his attitude the second time around would have been very different - but due to my infertility we never had another chance!!!
but I was left with acute resentment and anger at the way he had cut off when I was pregnant from this huge thing in our lives - for me this was a once in a lifetime occurrence and I was aware that it might be my last pregnancy at the time and only birth - so it was so very important and it should have been to him too!!!!
Well thats my story - I am still with Barry and it great now but it has been rocky at times .
All I can suggest if the reason your gf gives for splitting up has its root in your lack of interest in the pregnancy - perhaps the way forward is to acknowledge what a BIG thing this was for her -
that this was a very hurtful thing for her and that you do now understand this and try to understand why .
Perhaps you could try to understand why you were cut off form the pregnancy - what was it that was happening for you as while this does happen to some like my husband also - many men have the opposite reaction. In my case even my Male friends were more interested than Barry.
Perhaps this has left your gf like me worried to trust you emotionally ?
You say that you were so overjoyed when she moved int a flat closer to you - you said you were:
blinding han was so damn happy, so was i.
It strikes me that this was how you 'should' have felt about the pregnancy ...
perhaps she did not know if she could trust you emotionally when she realized you were now so happy at the prospect of becoming a family yet when she would have expected you to feel like this and wanted you to feel like this i.e when she was pregnant - you did not ( I hope you understand what I mean)
Anyway having gone through something similar I thought I would say what I thought about it.
Barry, my husband is a merchant seaman currently away at sea but if he was not I would probably have asked him to write to you about his side of it - why he was so unable to feel involved when I was pregnant and why he practically ignored my pregnancy and hut me so much and how this has been repaired over a long period but never really forgotten.
I know we can not change the past but I could only trust Barry again emotionally when he really did realize what a big thing it had been to me when he showed no interest in my bump and how deeply he had hurt me.
he had to make it very clear that he was sorry and he regretted it - and explain a bit about why he did this hurtful thing to me.
Your situation is probably very different to mine - but this is all I can suggest as a way forward as you seem to want so much to try
so my only suggestion is that it seems important for you to acknowledge what she it telling you -
that how you were when she was pregnant is pretty much unforgivable to her ( it pro baby always was but sometimes it takes time to realize how hurt by something you are)
all the best
Veritee
The best thing you can do is be her best friend, tell her you understand how hard it is and help her out as much as you can. Once she feels she can trust you, she will open up. How long have you noticed things have not been "right " 
