Dear Michelle,

I am sorry about the loss of your baby. I can imagine that pregnancy gave you meaning and intensified your hopes and dreams about the future: “everything was vibrant and hopeful and purposeful”. He too was sad about the loss. He opened up about his feelings, and it eventually brought you closer together:

He was surprised at how much loss he felt, and during this time became open about all of his feelings surrounding the pregnancy. There is never really a silver lining when pregnancy loss is involved, but in this case, we have grown closer, even just in the last few weeks.

I feel that it created a sense in him as well, that there is more to life than himself. It expanded his view of connection.

He is now considering moving in with you. He has given you a timeline for when you should expect this move and “it isn’t years out”. The reason he is reluctant to move in with you is his OCD, he says. You believe it’s not such a big problem and that you could work around it.

Well, I believe OCD is a legitimate reason for someone not to be willing to live with another person. If your habits – which are different than his – make him anxious, as you said earlier, then no wonder he would be terrified to live with you because his anxiety levels would be up all the time. I don’t think you could really work around his OCD unless he is willing to work on it in therapy. So far you’ve said he isn’t really willing to go to therapy – has that changed in the meanwhile?

To be honest, I believe raising a child with someone with OCD would be very challenging too. I believe a needy, crying child would trigger him a lot, and he would probably need to escape to his own space, away from you and the baby. And this would likely be traumatic for the child.

You say about your pregnancy:

At the same time I felt like it was all too good to be true and that it wasn’t really meant for me at the time.

Maybe this will sound rude, but I don’t really think it was too good to be true, because it would have been very hard for you to raise a child together with him. Maybe you would have ended up raising the child alone… Do you think you would have been up to it? How would such a scenario make you feel?

So maybe you are romanticizing things a little bit, while your boyfriend seems to be more down to earth, knowing his own limitations. Perhaps that’s why he was in shock and terror when he heard the news of your pregnancy (even though there was “an undercurrent of happiness at the same time”). Maybe he knows he isn’t capable of caring for a child, and that it would have been a huge challenge for him?