Dear Elizabeth,

I would just like to clarify something – your anger towards Christopher is justified too, because he did behave despicably. When he found out you were pregnant, he was not only not thrilled, but he also told you that he wouldn’t like to be known as the baby’s father:

Because he didn’t want anyone knowing about my pregnancy, I stupidly told him then we could take a break from each other so that we can throw suspicion from him. he gladly jumped at this.

That’s pretty horrible, considering that he knew you weren’t using contraception. It appears that from the moment you told him about the pregnancy, he wanted to jump ship and cut ties with you. He didn’t want to have anything to do with you, and behaved like that (not taking you to the hospital, not calling you back, not offering to pay for medical expenses, not visiting you while you were recovering, going partying with his friends and pretending as if nothing happened…). Which is despicable.

You however, due to your low self-esteem and the inability to stand up for yourself, unfortunately allowed this behavior. Your heart was breaking at his insensitivity, you needed him to be there for you, and yet, you told him that he is free to opt out. And he gladly accepted it – because he is that kind of guy: selfish, callous, insensitive.

As I said before, a part of you (the rational part) knew you can’t expect much from him, and I guess this is what you were communicating to him: that he can opt out, that you can take care of the baby alone. At some point you even blocked his phone and stopped calling him when you realized he wasn’t happy about the pregnancy:

During my pregnancy after our conversation, I had resolved that I would do it myself. I couldn’t stand another episode such as the one I had with my first pregnancy. I can never force a child on anyone. So I blocked him from my phone. and just stopped calling him.

So a part of you was allowing and accepting his selfishness. But another part of you was hoping that he would still come around, that he has a heart, that he would finally start caring… That’s the inner split in you.

Maybe that’s why he told you he thought this wouldn’t be so difficult (breaking up with you) because you behaved as if you were strong, as if you can take care of things on your own. But that wasn’t true – you were in fact very vulnerable and you needed him to be there for you, but you didn’t show it to him till the last minute (and you have put up with his selfishness for 2 years). And when you finally showed him, when your body was in pain and you needed his help desperately – he was surprised and ran away! Totally despicable behavior – to leave a pregnant woman alone in her pain and disappear, but it was in line with his character, unfortunately. Your tragedy is that you have tolerated his selfishness for too long, hoping he’d finally come around…

We’ve already talked about the reasons why you’ve tolerated his selfishness, and why you didn’t respect yourself enough – it’s because of your childhood and upbringing. I believe that in order to truly heal from Christopher’s abuse, you’d need to look at the abuse and mistreatment you suffered as a child. And express and process that anger too, and learn to stand up for yourself etc.