Help avoid resenting an unwanted baby

[Bausen]

The Debt - mindblowing, years more of hard work and slugging it out to even come close to where you were before.

I haven't been bothered to worry about this aspect too much. It is just money. Sure, it will add a few years of work on my life before I can retire, but I am so far from retirement (29 years old) that working for another year or two seems inconsequential. The reality that having this debt will not allow me to take my family on annual vacations or buy a nicer house is unfortunate too, but in the end our current house (3 bedroom) is sufficient for our needs and getting to do things like visiting Disneyland is far from required for my kids to grow up happy.

Certainly, my wife ought to learn to control her spending, but that is something that I can not force her to do so I will not bother to worry about it. Hopefully she will see the things that our family is missing out on because of her habit and decide to change. Of course, when confronted with the choice of controlling her spending or having a child she decided to have her cake and eat it too so I shouldn't be too hopeful. We will manage fine financially even while paying off the debt.

The baby - could this be the only (well at least more immediate) positive you will have out of this. I suppose all a baby needs to do is give you a dreamy smile to make you fall in love and forget the hurt and pain for awhile.

I'll try to come back in later......

I really feel for you mate.

Thanks. Seeing the baby could get me to forget the hurt and pain for awhile. I am concerned about the times in between seeing it that I am remembering the hurt and pain. Perhaps I worry about it too much, but I am who I am. That is me. It doesn't seem I can control that.

I'll apologise if there is a bit of man-bashing going on in this forum. We do try to curb the worst of it, while still allowing any member (male or female, but we do have more women) to have a vent about their partner.

It was not this forum in particular that I was referring to when mentioning the female-centric perspective abundant across the Internet with regards to my searches for information on how to deal with an unwanted pregnancy. I was referring to the WWW in general having an abundance of that attitude. To be fair, I have only ever read two other threads on these forums so I do not know the general attitude of the posters on this board. It is helpful to me.

To be honest, I am in a prenatal depression forum and I do not even know what prenatal depression is. I do not know if it is possible for men to have it or whether men are explicitly excluded by its definition. Maybe that is why I have trouble finding male perspective. I arrived here based on a google search. The quality of posters here is comparatively high. I noticed this morning that this is an Australian board. Thank you all for being bothered to read the ramblings of an American.

Sounds like you need a new counsellor, you're not connecting with her. Is this the one you're seeing with your wife? it may be worth seeing a separate one, just for yourself.

I have only seen the counselor once so I am not going to give up on her. I have another appointment in two days. Perhaps that will go better. It is the same counselor I am seeing with my wife as well as well as the counselor my wife is seeing individually. One one of my wife's friends referred us to this counselor when my wife was venting to her and mentioned we were looking for a marital counselor, but didn't know how to go about finding one. This counselor is the wife of the pastor at a local Lutheran church that my wife's friend attends. I hang out socially with some of the senior leadership at my church and would not feel comfortable working through my church at this time on this issue.

From what you just posted I agree with her that your wife's spending is a huge problem and probably causing some resentment in you, but it's not the only thing.

My wife's spending is a huge problem, but not something that I can control. Maybe there is some indirect resentment owing to this. I would like to focus on issues of resenting the baby since this is, you know, a prenatal depression forum.

There are definitely trust issues that I have with my wife. I feel disrespected. She has some things that I am encouraging her to work on and hope she will choose to make a change. All of this is unrelated to the forum topic. I can find a more appropriate avenue to work through these issues. I mentioned them in this thread only to give background on for fears I have with my resentment of the baby.

From your post, it sounds like you're actually really good at seeing the silver lining in things. Like reshaping your future with only two children and getting excited about it. My psych said to me "when you're in a black place, everything looks black and it's hard to see the good (white) bits". She made me do a dream sheet, which was just freeform thinking and writing of what was important to me to have in my future, without thinking about how I'm going to achieve them. Mine ended up like a bunch of bits of text, linked together like balloons. It was really revealling to myself, of what I truly found important and helped me focus on achieving good outcomes and drop a lot of 'what ifs' and day to day disappointments. It might be a useful exercise for you too.

Thank you for this advice. I am very analytic by nature and rarely get emotional. These last two weeks have been the exception for me in that I have been quite emotional, but that does not take away my analytic nature. Perhaps this exercise will help get me back to my natural way of problem solving. That is to say, focus on getting from where I am now to where I would like to go without being distracted my details that are ultimately inconsequential.

Sorry to hear about your situation. I don't have much advice to give you as I'm still struggling through my own dilemma but I wanted to let you know that I am, in a small way, glad that my messed up, honest mind has allowed you to find this place. I know that there will be a few other dad's floating around here that will be able to help you with your personal dilemma.

Thanks. It is therapeutic for me just to write about it and have some people read it and reply. Just by reading my ramblings and being bothered to reply you have helped.

Also, it really helps to have a support network around you. Do you have mates who are willing to sit down and listen to you sob your story to them and allow a bit of your burden to be lifted off your shoulders? I hope you do as it's something my gf's do to me and whether you realise it or not, it helps a fair bit just to talk or cry about it.

Wishing you the best of luck,

MoralDilemma

A support network is important, but I do not have mates that I could lean on and reasonably expect the support I need. This is, I suppose, why I have been out on the Internet looking for support. I am have been a software engineer at a large international corporation for a hair over nine years now. Most of my mates are other software engineers. We have been trained to deal with computers. This is not a group of guys that are prepared to, or would want to, offer emotional support to friends. If I became emotional while telling them my situation they would be uncomfortable and it would be awkward. Upon hearing my story they would likely consider the facts and offer to help me calculate what my child support payment would be.

I have a few other mates that I watch sports with. It is unlikely they would give me advice deeper than forcing me to go to the bar with them and get drunk. I am really in no mood to drink nor do I think it would be ultimately helpful.

My buddies from church would be most suitable, but they are talkers. There is a lot of gossip in the church even among some of the staff. I doubt that anything I tell them would remain in confidence. I will consider if there are any of them that I could talk to.

Thanks for the advice. I wish you the best of luck with your situation too.

I totally agree with you, women far too often take men's rights away from them when it comes to having or not having children.

:blush:

I need to bite my tongue. I already said enough boneheaded things in regard to this. I am too emotionally charged now and might say things that are hurtful that I would regret later.

It was inappropriate for me to draw comparisons between my situation and that of a victim of date rape or partner rape. Survivors of that have a whole additional bag of burden to deal with. I apologize to any survivors out there that found my comments to be insensitive and hurtful. My thinking was not clear.

I am really shocked at the amount of debt she has created in both your lives. I personally think you where doing the right thing by limiting the number of children you where having in this regard and find it unbelievable that she didn't keep her part of the decision. If she didn't want to agree then she needed to speak up then and there.

I wish there was something I could say to make it better.

Obviously I agree. She had agreed with me on what we needed to do. She even had the most input in the budget we put together and agreed to. I recognized that sometimes expenses change and told her that if she ever needed to spend more than we budgeted on something that it was not a big deal, but that she needed to let me know.

The only practical advice I can give is if adoption does become an option at any stage you and her would actually have a certain amount of input into the selection of adoptive parents.


I am so sorry you are in this situation.

Thanks. Adoption is my preferred solution. I am morally opposed to terminating the pregnancy and thankfully my wife shares that belief. Unfortunately, she says that she can not give the baby up for adoption. She knows that she will not be having another baby owing to her spending habits and she says she would regret it for the rest of her life if she gives it up.

[Mathermy]

I need to bite my tongue. I already said enough boneheaded things in regard to this. I am too emotionally charged now and might say things that are hurtful that I would regret later.

It was inappropriate for me to draw comparisons between my situation and that of a victim of date rape or partner rape. Survivors of that have a whole additional bag of burden to deal with. I apologize to any survivors out there that found my comments to be insensitive and hurtful. My thinking was not clear.

it was inappropriate.....but I think we all say thoughtless things when we are distressed. I think it speaks for your character that you have recognised your mistake & come back to apologize in the midst of all this.

Your wife's dishonest behaviour leaves me dumbfounded I can't imagine what she must have been thinking. It sounds like she has some impulse control problems-her behaviour certainly falls short of what I would consider 'normal'. Perhaps your wife would benefit from professional help also?

[Chickadee]

I was going to direct you to some helplines & organisations, but I don't know any in the USA. You might check out BeyondBlue, which is a national depression organisation here, with an excellent website with resources, personal stories, and a forum. http://www.beyondblue.org.au/index.aspx? The forum (bulletin board) is a bit hard to find: http://www.beyondblue.org.au/index.aspx?link_id=61.303


There is a dads' section of the forum here, and you might get more guy's opinions & help there. It's not exclusive to guys there, some women will post on what they think they're partner would do or think. Dont' be discouraged by the fact that only one thread is showing when you click on that, that's only threads in the last month. If you scroll to the bottom of the page there is a 'Display Options' setting where you can choose to see older threads & posts too.

[Tam-I-Am]

I've been following your thread and trying to consider what I can offer by way of advice and/or experience. I'm a psychologist here, and something that struck me is the fact that your counsellor is just that - a counsellor. In Australia, anybody (and I mean ANYBODY) can label themselves a counsellor with no or next-to-no training in how to actually be a counsellor. When you stated that your counsellor is the wife of the pastor, it raised several alarms for me - there is no way such a person with little or no training, no matter how well intentioned, can be impartial and counsel you on such a fraught and complicated situation.

I would really advise you to seek the services of a qualified psychologist (I know I'm biased!). It honestly shouldn't matter with a psychologist whether they're male or female, although obviously - given that a counselling relationship is primarily a human relationship - that you will 'click' better with some than with others. However, I feel confident that if you were a client, or a family group of clients approaching me in Australia with these issues - that I would be able to counsel all parties involved. Having said that, it is often easier to speak to a counsellor/psychologist of the same gender to yourself.

I think that you have actually arrived at a place that takes me months, sometimes years to help my client get to - the calm acceptance that you can't control another's behaviour, but only your own. I find that really amazing, and honestly quite advanced. Perhaps it is the logical part of you, which is obviously quite prosaic about it. However, I can appreciate where that leaves you. Nobody likes to feel trapped and without choices, and unfortunately - your wife's actions are leaving you in exactly such a position. I can only begin to imagine how I would feel should my husband put me in a similar position, and I'm truly sorry that you're having to go through such emotional turmoil at what should be a happy time in your lives.

I think that you're doing the right things - I guess all I can suggest is use these boards exactly the way you have been - to vent, to get opinions, to allow yourself the space to get some support (albeit online - sometimes that is JUST as important as in-real-life support).

My thoughts are with you - I hope you and your wife can find your way through this.

[Ys_Woman]

The problem is, I do not want it and I am afraid of long term resentment causing me to be a terrible parent.
In the end, the only thing I can control is myself. Does anyone have any ideas what can be done to avoid resenting this child?

From what I read in this first post it doesn't sound like you have an issue with an unborn child, but rather an issue of lost trust with your wife.
I would urge you and your wife to attend counselling to heal that problem between you.
I think you will very likely love your new child as much as the others, but will your marriage survive if you don't seek help now?
To be honest I don't understand why another child wouldn't be seen as a God send..but I haven't walked in your shoes and don't know the complete story.
I guess if it that important to you to not have any more children you will need to book yourself in for a vasectomy.
I hope you and your wife can heal and be happy.

[KatiesMum]

Hi - and big to you. Your situation is truly a difficult one.

I am in a situation where we desperately wanted another baby, but sadly cannot have one - so I understand your wifes longinig for another child even though you and she have obviously decided logically that it isnt practical.

Even understanding that longing however, I do not in any way understand her decision to deceive you in creating that child .....

Unfortunately it does come down to the money thing too - as her thinking would certainly have been along the lines of 'I cant be honest with him, as if he knows about the other debts he will never agree to another baby' so one lie builds upon the last ......

Getting down to your issue - I do think that you are a long way towards being able to seperate your anger and disappointment towards your wife from the feelings towards the baby. It will take time, but you are more than half way there ..... just acknowledging the problem is a huge first step.

I wish you all the luck in the world, both with your family and in fixing your marraige.

[MyFourCubs]

Hi I just wanted to drop in and apologise for not posting back- this is life with 3 (2 very small) children and my dh is at work so not alot of time. I have been thinking of you and reading this thread where I can.
I also wanted to apologise for my comment about women intentionally getting pregnant- while it is true that it happens quite regularly I certainly did not mean to imply that I thought it was ok- not at all. Sorry if that came out wrong.
Very happy you seem to be getting a lot of good advice on this board- hope you are finding it helpful. Did have a quick chat with my dh about your situation and he said will try and post you a reply. Like I said, he hads pretty much been at work the last 2 days.
I do feel rather unqualified to help you in this situation which is why I have been pretty quiet, esp after all the stuff about your wife and the credit card debt came up. I do not mean to sound glib here at all, but as you are American have you considered DR Phil. Quite serious, as soon as you said that it reminded me of identical situation on his program a while back. I don't agree that you can't control your wifes spending- if she can seriously go wild with money (or plastic) without a single regard to your feelings and your family situation there is something very, very wrong. Hence, my suggestion of Dr Phil
Hang in there, you seem like a very nice guy and your wife is very, very lucky to have you!
Sara

[Bausen]

it was inappropriate.....but I think we all say thoughtless things when we are distressed. I think it speaks for your character that you have recognised your mistake & come back to apologize in the midst of all this.

I edited the post to remove the comparisons. Hopefully I didn't miss any.

Your wife's dishonest behaviour leaves me dumbfounded I can't imagine what she must have been thinking. It sounds like she has some impulse control problems-her behaviour certainly falls short of what I would consider 'normal'. Perhaps your wife would benefit from professional help also?

After I told her that I was going for individual counseling and asked her to go to marital counseling with me she chose to also get individual counseling. I have my hopes that she will hear from a unbiased third-party what the direct results are of her habits on her family and that she will then choose to try changing those habits. Only time will tell.

There is a dads' section of the forum here, and you might get more guy's opinions & help there.

Cool, I just explored the place a bit. Wow, there are plenty of different forums. Good stuff. Thanks for the heads up.

When you stated that your counsellor is the wife of the pastor, it raised several alarms for me - there is no way such a person with little or no training, no matter how well intentioned, can be impartial and counsel you on such a fraught and complicated situation.

It is a good point that I didn't think of before that I should consider the qualifications of the counselor. The letters on the business card that relate to qualifications are "E LICSW". This meant nothing to me, but my good friend Google gave me the following info: "LICSW = Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker. These are masters-level clinical social workers with advanced experience who have met state requirements for licensure." I never found out what the 'E' stands for, but I guess it is some additional qualification.

Looks like she has some training beyond being the pastor's wife, but she is also an older lady around 60 years old. It is possible that her formal training is somewhat dated. I have no information about when or where she earned her masters-level degree. She had some certificates hanging on the wall that I'll pay attention to when I am there tomorrow.

I would really advise you to seek the services of a qualified psychologist (I know I'm biased!). It honestly shouldn't matter with a psychologist whether they're male or female, although obviously - given that a counselling relationship is primarily a human relationship - that you will 'click' better with some than with others. However, I feel confident that if you were a client, or a family group of clients approaching me in Australia with these issues - that I would be able to counsel all parties involved. Having said that, it is often easier to speak to a counsellor/psychologist of the same gender to yourself.

It is helpful to see your perspective. Based on the qualifications I listed above, would you advise me to look further? Admittedly, I didn't look at all and jumped at the first option I heard about.

I think that you have actually arrived at a place that takes me months, sometimes years to help my client get to - the calm acceptance that you can't control another's behaviour, but only your own. I find that really amazing, and honestly quite advanced.

Don't be too amazed. It is not something that I just figured out. It took me a few years and a hard lesson to figure this out. Back when we were first married I took control of managing our finances. I essentially controlled the all the money aside from $350 (623 Australian dollars at average exchange rate over those three years. 367 AUD at current exchange rates) per month that I gave to my wife as spending money. This worked well for a couple years, but as I mentioned earlier in the thread this did not work well for my wife and she went out and signed up for some additional spending power.

Upon finding out about that debt and discussing with her the reasons I came to realize that I was being too controlling with our money. It was my fault that she went and secretly got credit cards and maxed them out. Oh well, I figured out what I was doing wrong, took my lumps, and looked to move on.

My wife had agreed to the budget back then, but by taking away her freedom to break the budget I had driven her to go the route of secrecy. It became clear to me that I could not take away her freedom to spend more money than was budgeted. All I could do was explain to her what the effect of spending beyond our budget would be and then let her make her choices knowing how it would effect us.

From here, we re-worked the budget and removed most non-essential items such as family vacations and savings for a better house. All essential items such as house payment, groceries, gas, utilities, and clothes remained in the budget. After the rework of the budget which included paying for the newly discovered debt we were left with $1800 (3216 AUD at that time or 1884 AUD current exchange rates) monthly.

Figuring the best way for my wife to learn to manage money was to, you know, let her manage money I gave her soul control over that $1800 per month. We agreed that she was going to need to average paying $150 per month towards our house. which was above the minimum payment -- as evidence that she was able to manage the money. Once we had the debt paid off and she averages paying $150 per month for one year we were going to commence the process involved with conceiving two more children.

That still left her with $1650 per month spending money and she could do essentially whatever she liked with it. I told her that one of the things I would like to do was go on family vacations annually, but we would only go if we had, you know, enough money saved up for it.

Since that time, I have realized that I could not force my wife to make any particular choice. She is free to make whatever choice she likes. The theory has been that if I communicate to her my wishes, and she respects me, my wishes would be fulfilled a reasonable amount of time. She didn't like me controlling it so I went completely hands off. She controls it all and if we had more children or bought anything outside our budget it was entirely up to her.

I told her if she ever wanted me to help her budgeting that $1800 to let me know and I would help her put together a budget. To my knowledge, a budget for that monthly income was never made. She preferred something more free-form money management. That wouldn't be my choice for how to manage money, but who am I to choose for her how to manage it? Especially if I really want her to learn. I figured we would take some lumps as she learned, but I didn't worry about it much. It is not like I never went to a restaurant or spent it on other things that could be considered wasteful when I managed it.

This overall attitude of working on communicating my wants to my wife, but never trying to make her choice for her unless she asked improved our relationship greatly. During this time our love grew much stronger. It is for this reason that I will not make my wife's choices for her or try to force her to change.

If it only takes you months to get your clients to understand this than they are much quicker than me. If I would have understood this within months of knowing my wife I am sure we would be much better off.

I think that you're doing the right things - I guess all I can suggest is use these boards exactly the way you have been - to vent, to get opinions, to allow yourself the space to get some support (albeit online - sometimes that is JUST as important as in-real-life support).

My thoughts are with you - I hope you and your wife can find your way through this.

Thank you. Your advice and support are much appreciated.

From what I read in this first post it doesn't sound like you have an issue with an unborn child, but rather an issue of lost trust with your wife.

I have heard that enough that I have to assume it is true. I certainly have lost trust with my wife, but this issue has not consumed me near as much as the pregnancy. I am confident that we will be able to rebuild trust.

My fear is that the baby will be a non-stop reminder of the hurt and this will lead me to resent the child. I already am having tough feelings about the fetus and have been obsessing about this. Sure, I might be better off not worrying about it, but I do not know how to simply stop worrying about it. It is not like a light switch that I can just flip off. It has been weeks now since I have been happy and my feeling is that this is owing to the pregnancy. Without the pregnancy it would be much easier to move forward with the healing on the other issues that to me seem comparatively short-term.

I guess if it that important to you to not have any more children you will need to book yourself in for a vasectomy.

Right, that is what is going to happen. It didn't happen before because it was not important to me not to have more children. We agreed that we would not close the door on more children until 2009. Indeed, I wanted more children, but didn't want to have them if we were unable to manage our money. The problem is more the having a child that was conceived in deceit and the fears of resentment than the actual fact that we are going to have another child. Also, as not having a child was the agreed upon effect of not managing money it strikes me as counterproductive to have the child even while the money management is in the worst shape yet.

Unfortunately it does come down to the money thing too - as her thinking would certainly have been along the lines of 'I cant be honest with him, as if he knows about the other debts he will never agree to another baby' so one lie builds upon the last ......

This makes sense. It is likely what her thinking was.

Getting down to your issue - I do think that you are a long way towards being able to seperate your anger and disappointment towards your wife from the feelings towards the baby. It will take time, but you are more than half way there ..... just acknowledging the problem is a huge first step.

Yeah, that is exactly what I need to do. Separate my anger and disappointment towards my wife from my feelings towards the baby. I can't see it, but it is encouraging to know I am more than half way there. This is why it is good to have perspective from the outside since outsiders can see these things. So what can I do to separate these feelings? Once I have them separated will I just magically not think of the child as the manifestation of my wife's scheme? Will it not be a constant reminder of the pain? That would be nice, but I am not there yet. Hopefully I get there soon. It is barely bearable.

Hi I just wanted to drop in and apologise for not posting back- this is life with 3 (2 very small) children and my dh is at work so not alot of time. I have been thinking of you and reading this thread where I can.
I also wanted to apologise for my comment about women intentionally getting pregnant- while it is true that it happens quite regularly I certainly did not mean to imply that I thought it was ok- not at all. Sorry if that came out wrong.

No need to apologize, but you can refund me double my money back if you like. If you feel you have to apologize it is more than accepted. I understand that people are busy. There has been lots of good advice on this forum. I have gotten my money worth out of it

Also, I did not think you were meaning it was okay for women to get pregnant on the sly. My comment was that it is twisted for women to do that. Not anything directed at you or your comment. Well, that is unless, you know, you are one that got pregnant on that sly. In that case I still stand by my comment on the topic.

I do not mean to sound glib here at all, but as you are American have you considered DR Phil. Quite serious, as soon as you said that it reminded me of identical situation on his program a while back.

Nope, I haven't even considered Dr. Phil. That would be far too much drama. I prefer something that is a lot more private.

I don't agree that you can't control your wifes spending

You are right that I could control her spending if I really wanted to, but that is not the type of relationship I want to have. I can control her, but I will not because I choose not to do that. At some point being too controlling turns into being abusive. I envision a relationship of love and mutual respect. This is the end I am working towards.

Thanks for your you nice comments!

[Tam-I-Am]

Based on the qualifications I listed above, would you advise me to look further? Admittedly, I didn't look at all and jumped at the first option I heard about.

Not based on the qualifications, no - given that one of the most talented counsellors I have the pleasure of knowing in my professional life is a social worker. But based on YOUR experiences of her, and the fact that you do not feel that you're getting impartial counselling from her - yes, I would strongly advise seeking a different counsellor. I would obviously advocate for a psychologist, but a good social worker can be just as talented as a psychologist. Above all, you have to find somebody whom you feel comfortable with.

I wish you all the luck in the world.

[Ys_Woman]

You say that abortion or adoption are not options so it leaves you with little choice. You will ultimately have a child.
I honestly do feel for men as you have no say once a woman becomes pregnant. I wonder it from your perspective. I would feel frustrated and powerless.
My own dh was ready to have a vasectomy after we lost a pregnancy in 2006 but I asked him if he could hold off until early 2007 as I was hopeful of having a 4th child. In all likelihood he did not want another child. We were already burdened by only having one income and being in our 40's with two young children to see through schooling as it was. However, he sensed my need and decided if it made me happy then he would wait.
Thankfully I did fall pregnant again in that time frame and we now have a darling little baby boy. My husband may worry about how we will cope financially (I am very wise with the money though), but he just adores our bub..and even suggested another.
I sincerely hope you can work it all out so that your child, once born, does not have to carry the burden of your current negative feelings.
I wish you peace.