Dear Anita,

Thank you so much for responding and giving your insight and advice.

The course of drugs is over and I’ve had alot of bleeding so I hope that’s it and I don’t need any other procedures. Once that first tablet was down my throat, I felt so much better about my decision. Like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

Once the drugs were in my system, things calmed down alot between myself and my partner (let’s call him “M”). After there was no going back we were able to talk quite openly. He has not apologised for the text and I don’t think he quite gets how much of a kick in the guts it was.

He says that there were more frustrations at play on that day and that’s why he reacted the way he did. I have been very irritable for a few weeks before the test, nauseous and tired the week before and then all of the above compounded with anger and self pity the week after the test. Looking back, I was incapable of doing much else rexcept for basic self care, care for the kid, cooking dinner for the 3 of is and going to work. Everything else would frustrate me.

He has been picking up the slack around the house and I don’t think he likes it. I am the world’s anti-housewife anyway, always untidy and ever the procrasrinator but over the last few weeks shit has got really bad around here and we have devolved into almost unhygienic. When the reasons for my recent incapabilities became clear, I received no grace, no sympathy or even any understanding.

My sister was talking about her anger style and how she bottles everything up. I’m the same, as is with my other sister. She was saying that her and her partner had a fight over the weekend that went for hours but they both felt so good afterwards. I think both M and I need that.

I hate fighting with him because it’s like when he starts on me, all of my feelings about his behaviour are instantly replaced with my own feelings of inadequacy 100% directed at myself. I am so caught up with what he said to me that I never get my parts out. I feel like a conditioned, battered wife.

Another thing about our fights is that when I am sufficiently riled up enough to assert myself, he rejects it. All of it.

He confronted me earlier this year about an issue that happened at dinner with my family and how apparently I’d made him look like a bad guy. At the time, I was going through therapy and was in fact mapping out all of my thoughts and feelings toward him as suggested by my therpist, at first, I wanted to avoid it but then I realised that all of my points were right in front of me and I could use then to get back on track, so I engaged. I’d told him how I’d felt abandoned and unsupported after the baby was born, how I felt I’d lost myself, how I felt trapped, how it seemed like his life hasn’t changed, he still gets to do all the things that make him happy and how I was so miserable and depressed that I just prayed that I’d die in my sleep and not have to live in this misery any more.

All I remember of that was that was that he was offended by the notion that he was unsupportive. That instead of having one person needing looking after (baby) that now he has got 2. He rejected that my life hasn’t changed and that I still take the time to do nothing and watch TV. And perhaps the worst was that he rejects depression as a condition and that I should just power through and get on with it. He asked several times how he could “fix” it. I tried explaining that there is no solution to it but it was like he wouldn’t hear of it.

In the wake of the termination, I think things may have changed already. The walls are up on his side. Not sure if it’s the relief of it all or the bottoming out of pregnancy hormones but I’m looking for closeness and intimacy, my protector and my rock. He’s just turned into this brick wall.

We have always had problems with sex, too. I feel like I’m in the mood at certain times of the month (ovulation, clearly) and we might have alot of sex around then for a week, maybe 2 but the rest of the time I could live without it, my mind is focused on other things. It’s not that I don’t enjoy it, it’s just that my switch for it is either on or off. He sees my answer of no as the deepest of rejections and I have lost count of the times that I’ve heard him say how I don’t love him, that he has suggested that if we start with foreplay I might change my mind. I’ve had sex with him out of guilt somene times that it’s not funny. That guilt has made me feel angry -why can’t he just accept no for an answer- that I eventually started having pain before, during nand after sex.

I had a conversation with one of my dearest of friends yesterday and that conversation reminded to come back here to talk. She has a 3 month old son who she has been trying for for 4 years and has been seeking help recently for anxiety. I told her about the termination and my advice for her is to just take precautions if she doesn’t want another one yet. She shared with me that she hadn’t stopped bleeding since her son was born and so was therefore unable to have sex yet (and how also, as usual for a new mum, he sex drive was in the gutter). She said that her husband 100% respects her body and never pushes her to do anything she doesn’t want to. He takes care of his own urges as he requires.

I wished so bad for this to be me and M. It’s about respecting your partners body and respecting their decisions and that no should be the end of it. I have never been one for being jealous of other people or their relationships but I could not help myself.

As stated earlier, I get no grace, no sympathy or understanding when I don’t want to have sex. I get the opposite.

In fact, right now I am feeling that everything is turned back on me and I am being emotionally abused and manipulated.

One of my drama-queen acquaintances tried to do this to me a few months ago and I totally, 100% stood my ground and I’ve cooled off the relationship indefinitely. She is also mentally unwell and I cannot bear that burden as well as my own.

My mum did say to me after the fight I detailed above that he will always find something wrong with me. If it’s not my untidiness, it’s the fact that I smoke, if it’s not that, it will be something else.

Anita, I totally appreciate your support and I think you’re right. I need to cool it off and spend some time evaluating my relationship, like I’m doing with the drama queen acquaintance.

I just don’t know which way to go about this. How do I do this while living with him? I really don’t want to take our son away with me (away from him) but I feel like I might have to to get some distance, clear my head and move forward.