Is it worth having a baby with my vile husband?
DEAR BEL,
I’VE been with my husband ten years, nine married. He’s from abroad and constantly tells me off if I have an opinion. His culture is so different and men like him are used to humble, obedient women. If I talk back, he says I disrespect him. He yells and talks over me.
He wants a big family. In 2011, I came close to death due to an ectopic pregnancy. I didn’t get pregnant again. Doctors recommended IVF, but I resorted to comfort-eating and piled on weight.
He constantly accuses me of not wanting kids, tells me how to behave, how to drive, who to talk to. Finally, he lost our business and then I caught him cheating last year. He said he’s entitled to find someone to give him a child. I need support to focus on losing weight — having gone from 14st to 20st.
He never said sorry for cheating and says other men would have dumped me after years without children. At least once a month he goes moody and blames me, saying it’s my problem and I need to sort it out.
In bed, we are fine. The problems start during the day. He goes from nice and cuddly at night to being very cold to me and hardly speaking. Yesterday, after making love, I told him we needed to discuss my weight and IVF and he said: ‘Nothing to discuss, I’ll divorce you.’
I begged him — please be supportive for two months, come with me to the gym and help me have the strength to lose weight. He’s angry with me for not giving him money to invest as he pleases to revive the business he took to the ground last year. He has a daughter, aged 16, from a previous relationship — his partner left him a few months before I met him because he was making her cry, too.
He stopped all contact with his daughter — and now when men mock him for having no kids, he doesn’t tell them about her, but just comes home mad at me for ‘my problem.’
My question is: is it really worth it to be with someone unsupportive who also cheated? Is it worth considering him as a father of a potential child? Will I have enough time to find someone to have a child — because I really want one? SIMONE
WHEN I first read your (much longer) email I had to walk outside and take some deep breaths — appalled by the helpless horror of the situation you describe.
Oh, I’ve had ones just as bad over the years, but some days it all feels too much, and I want to shout, ‘For God’s sake, woman, what are you doing with your life?’
You don’t tell me your age, yet from the urgency of that last question I can start guessing. But let’s just make something very clear: a child isn’t something to ‘want’ in the abstract, like coveting a new accessory.
And frankly, I’m not sure which I find worse: the notion that you might actually stay with this horrible bloke who sounds unworthy of fatherhood or the idea of you scurrying around in desperation to find a new sperm donor.
Too many children are born to people who should not have them — and I have no sympathy for those who fail to comprehend the vital, precious, unique importance of each child’s life.
Having said that, I will express sympathy for your plight (and consider your weight issue later), while telling you bluntly that you will be mad and self-destructive to stay with this man.
Oh, so he is good in bed but vile in the daytime? Is that a basis for any relationship worth the name? Is there a single good thing to say for the man you are still considering as a putative father for a child? He is a bully who believes you should submit to the misogynistic conventions of his culture, and showed you nothing but cruelty when you needed support.
He ruined your business, yet expects more money — and (adding insult to vast injury) he was unfaithful and now taunts you with divorce, just to be cruel. It’s a measure of how he has browbeaten you into rock-bottom self-esteem that you don’t yell agreement - and then kick him out.
You actually ask me if it is ‘worth it’ to be with this hostile, unloving man who abandoned his own daughter, yet wants you to give him more babies to neglect! No, Simone, it is not worth it and now is the time to start considering yourself worth much more than you can ever be while this so-called marriage continues. You’ve had a terrible time with the ectopic pregnancy and your weight gain.
You attribute your weight to stress, depression and anxiety. To that, I’d probably add fear, since you clearly dread his moods. Therefore ‘comfort-eating’ makes terrible sense. The fatter you are, the more demoralised you feel, and the less likely it is that you will ever have a child, so the more he bullies you.
You must recognise this cycle and vow to act to save yourself. Start by counselling. Because you mention the gym, you know how to start a healthy regime — and that this is vital. Consult websites about diet. I wish you all the luck and strength to start a new life, but leave you with the thought that most women would rather be alone and childless than exist with this ‘husband’.
...once in a while/you can creep out of your own life /and become someone else /an explosion in that nest of wires/we call the imagination. FROM ACID BY MARY OLIVER (U.S. POET 1935-2019)