Dear Butterfly:

You opened your post with my name. But I am only one member here, the most active and for a long time, but still one member.

Regarding your thread- I am glad you posted. I hope you fully recovered from the pregnancy termination, that you saw a doctor after the experience you described and that you are fully recovered, are you?

Regarding your boyfriend’s response to your physical pain: no doubt it was unsatisfactory. But if your pain was expected, if you knew and he knew that it was expected, it was not a good idea to expect him to listen to the moans all night long. What is the use of that?

Again, if the two of you agreed to the termination, and if the two of you knew it was not life threatening, and if you had all the possible medical help available to you at any time during that night, better after a long time on the phone, end the call and let him sleep so that he can attend to the appointment the next day.

Men are often very uncomfortable with the expressions of pain, physical and emotional. It is so because they are taught to not express pain (the boys-don’t-cry message). I have seen it myself in a loving man, real loving and decent and very helpful, not showing empathy for a person in pain because of feeling so uncomfortable with the expressions of pain.

I don’t fault a person for feeling uncomfortable, they can’t help what they feel.

If your boyfriend is otherwise caring and helpful to you, and if he asked you for the details of the pregnancy termination and the pain you expressed on the phone was expected, and he knew as you did that the pain did not indicate danger to you, maybe his unsatisfactory reaction is forgivable.

What do you think?

anita

Dear Butterfly:

I want to retell your story that you shared here and then offer you my thoughts:

You are in your 30s. Your family has been pressuring you to get married and have children. You’ve been in a long distance relationship for two years. You and your boyfriend lived together for six months at one time and for 2.5 months at another time, both times not in your country, or near your family. The two of you were planning to get married.

Following the last visit with him, you returned to your country and found out that you were pregnant. You communicated with your boyfriend about it and the two of you decided to terminate the pregnancy and that he will not be present with you during the termination because of the expense of buying a plane ticket and his difficulty leaving work in such a short notice.

You followed the termination procedure alone, on your own, on a Friday night. Thirty minutes after taking the second pill, you were writhing in pain because of the expected intense cramping and bleeding. You were on the phone with him. At midnight he asked you to mute the audio because “he couldn’t sleep and he had an appointment that morning at his doctor’s”. You told him angrily that you needed him and that if sleep was more important to him then he should hang up the phone.

He didn’t hang up but stayed quiet, “Not a word”. Later in the night you were screaming in pain. Later he said: “okay, really babe I have to go. I will my phone on and just call me when something happens”.

You are now angry and disappointed with him and you don’t know “how to proceed”.

My thoughts: you made a few rational decisions: to terminate the pregnancy, to do so quickly before you start a new job, to do so without the knowledge of your family, and to agree to your boyfriend not flying in and be present during the termination. It all made sense, logically.

You wrote regarding the decision that he stays in his country during the procedure: “I understood. I am independent and knew I could handle this  on my own”-

-but in every independent woman there is a girl that looks up to that prince charming in those fairy tales, coming in on a horse to save the damsel in distress. You understood rationally that it makes sense, financially and practically, to terminate the pregnancy alone, but you skipped the emotional understanding that you expected him, as a man, to be there by your side.

I think that you may have been angry with him before the procedure, angry that he did not buy that plane ticket so to be with you. And then, during the call Friday night, you got angrier.

I need to ask you if I am correct in my understanding at this point. If you reply we can continue to communicate on the matter.

anita

Dear Butterfly:

If he believed that you were safe, after being on the phone with you for a long, long time, it was reasonable of him to want to sleep, because he had things to do the next day and he wasn’t taking the pain away from you by being with you on the phone for all the time that he was, so why shouldn’t he sleep and be able to function the following day?

Like  I wrote, you should have had someone there in person. But there was nothing for him to do long distance.

If he is a decent man, if he plans to make a good life with you and has been working honestly toward that goal, forgive him. It is the two of you who made the choice to terminate and it is the two of you who made the choice that he will not fly and be with you  in person during the termination. So it is not that he made these choices alone.

It is not his fault  that you didn’t make the second choice whole heartedly, that deep  inside you expected him to do the opposite of what was decided.

Does it make sense to you, to forgive him and resume your plan to make a life together with him, (again, assuming he is a decent man with honest intentions and he is working on making it happen)?

anita

Dear Butterfly:

You are welcome. It is good that the two of you are talking.

You alone experienced the physical pain that Friday night, but remember that he experiences pain too, at times that you don’t. As you proceed in life with him, sometimes you will experience pain while he doesn’t, and at other times he will experience pain while you don’t.

He is a man but a human nonetheless, that means that he feels pain just like you do. He feels fear just like you do. This is why it is important that the two of you operate like a team, helping each other.

Better not expect him to fix everything, as some  women expect a man to do. He is only human, maybe taller, maybe he has more muscles, but outside these insignificant advantages in modern life, he is not stronger or wiser or superior for having been born a male.

I hope to read from you again, anytime you’d like.

anita