The dilemma I have in my mid-30s and I was in a relationship for 10 years with someone I love very deeply and with whom I thought I would grow old. We recently started receiving a medically assisted IUI with donor sperm (we are lesbians) and then my partner left me two days before our first insemination. I discovered that I had had an affair with a mutual friend. He came back for a while, and we had a lot of love and intimacy, but then he left again.
I had been going to our clinic for three weeks and I feel very sad and as if I couldn’t let go of what I thought would be our baby. There also doesn’t seem to be any language for that, as lesbian fertility treatment isn’t really in society’s “talk”, so I’m even struggling to name what happened to me.
I also understand that issues are symptomatic of larger issues and I want to own my share in the breakdown – our communication had been completely broken as my partner now says she didn’t really want our baby.
Now I realize that my partner had been slowly retiring during the two years of planning (we chose names, schools, places to live, saved money, talked about how and when we would have our second child) and while, at first, I tried to talk to her, she shut me up so much that in the end I got angry and needed some kind of connection, even if it was negative, like a child, I guess.
How the hell can I process and accept all of this, and how do I get on with it? I can’t go beyond feeling like a failure and having it worked really badly, which is not rational, I know, but I feel very depressed. I’m also not sure if I should dedicate myself to motherhood alone. Would that be enough for my son? It feels very punishing. And only.
Philippa’s answer I’m glad you wrote. You have to listen to her. Looks like your partner loved you, but his body told him he didn’t want children. You loved each other, but you wanted different things. You want both a child who did not want to interpret his withdrawal as a sign that he did not. You’re right: business is usually about problems in a person’s main relationship. His adventure seems to want to escape not necessarily from you, but from fatherhood.
Of course, you are devastated. You lost her and you lost the dream of being a father to her. You seem to be right about each other in many ways, except that your dreams for your future were different. She had a hard time telling you, maybe she had a hard time telling herself, well, she told you now. He may be phobic about the conflict, making it difficult for him to raise difficult issues. You have a great view of what happened and why, but that doesn’t stop the pain you’re going through right now, which seems aggravated by embarrassment.
Of course, you are devastated. You lost her and you lost the dream of being a father to her
You know cognitively that you have nothing to be ashamed of. This is not a failure, it is something that happened to you, but it does not stop the feelings. It’s like mourning. You are experiencing a loss. When a person leaves us for divorce or death he may feel that we have also lost the part of us that we were when we were together. This empty void in us can feel like a raw wound. You’re thinking, this hurts so much, how can I recover? The shock will feel less raw over time. You will grow around it, there is no acceleration in this process, but in a year or two in relation to your friends, your job, your interests, the wound will heal.
You feel punished, you are suffering an unbearable shame, but that does not mean that you have done anything wrong. You didn’t. Looks like your ex-girlfriend didn’t know until the insemination was imminent that this was definitely not what she wanted, so you can’t expect her to be able to guess what she herself didn’t know yet.
If possible, take some compassionate work, stay with the people who know and love you best, perhaps your parents or a sibling. Let them take care of you and maybe keep people away for a while when you get home so you don’t be alone until you’re ready.
And the other person who left you is the baby you dreamed of, the baby and the person they would have become. How are you doing?
You are enough for your child alone. You’ll need the support of friends and family, but that’s enough. Research shows that happier families are not necessarily those of two parents, and children thrive on one, especially with a supportive community. It is the socioeconomic factors that make the difference rather than the number of parents a child has.
If you have any questions, please send a brief email to askphilippa@observer.co.uk