by Rachel
Kurzius
Dear Rachel,
I am a woman in my mid-twenties and I am in a serious
relationship. My boyfriend and I practice safe sex, but somehow I still managed
to get pregnant. We were totally devastated. My boyfriend wanted to keep it,
but I am just not ready to have a child. Even though he promised that we would
share the responsibilities I just knew that it wouldn’t work out like that.
Even though I love him I just couldn’t do it.
He came with me to get an abortion and claimed to support
me but things have not been the same since. He is moody and says that he is
grieving our child. I think he is angry with me for having the abortion but he
won’t talk to me about it.
Can we get through this? I thought we could but he has
totally closed himself off from me and now I feel so lost and alone.
No Baby, No Boyfriend
Dear No Baby, No Boyfriend,
Did you know that more than one in three women* in the
United States will have an abortion by the time they are 45 years old? This
isn’t to minimize your suffering or the uniqueness of your situation, but just
to let you know that you aren’t alone. This burden of womanhood -- the capacity
to create life -- puts all of us ladyfolk in strange situations. But I am so
sorry that your unintended pregnancy has another unintended consequence: a
wedge placed firmly between you and your boyfriend.
I am glad your boyfriend supported your choice. It seems
like he tried his very hardest to be there for you -- in the lead-up to the
procedure through the waiting room. But can you blame him that he is in
mourning? It’s confusing that perhaps there could have been a baby but now
there isn’t. He may have imagined the two of you cruising Cleveland Park with a
stroller and a smiling child. This possibility has been taken from him, at
least for now.
That doesn’t make you evil, of course. But the baby was
there and now it’s gone, so what is he going to do? We can’t help the way we
feel at first, even as we try to temper our emotions. The fact that he tells
you he is grieving “your child” means that he is thinking of a gurgling,
giggling baby. He is not thinking about what the two of you actually had --
which was very much not a baby. It is useless to draw these distinctions with
him right now, but please remember them for your own well-being.
What concerns me isn’t that he is sad. That is natural.
It is that he seems to be blaming you for his sadness. Just as you need to be
there for him as he tries to tackle these complex emotions, he needs to
remember that you too are going through something. By making you the villain,
he might find clarity in the murkiness of his confusion. But he’s also so lost
in the murkiness he is forgetting that you are his ally and his love, not his
enemy.
Remind him of that. He needs reminding.
Will you get through this? I don’t know. Have you dealt
with death before? When a loved one dies, the best thing you can do is just
plain be there. Sometimes that means listening, sometimes it means sitting with
him as he watches TV. But he needs to be there for you, too. You are also in
this murkiness. The two of you can walk together, slowly but surely, away from
the murkiness that threatens to envelop you and your relationship, or he can
choose to walk by himself.
Either way, I suggest that you contact the organization
Exhale, www.exhaleprovoice.org.
Call the talkline for after-abortion support. Try and get your boyfriend to do
the same. Maybe he’s afraid that if he talks to you, he’ll say something hurtful.
But he needs to start talking to someone.
Know that all relationships face challenges. We can’t
always agree with the people we love or want to tackle issues in the same way.
However, the way we deal with these differences and bridge these gaps separates
the couples from the exes.
As you fret over your boyfriend and your relationship,
make sure you’re taking care of yourself, too. Every day, intentionally do at
least one thing simply because it makes you happy. Savor that feeling. Over
time, it will shine into more of you.
I wish you all the best, No Baby, No Boyfriend. People
without babies and boyfriends can find that there is much more to love. But I
hope that your boyfriend sees that what he loves has been standing in front of
him all along.
All the best,
Rachel
*That statistic comes from here: http://bit.ly/99dVdw.
___
Rachel Kurzius revels in giving advice, and has provided
counsel both as a columnist and a friend. She lives in Washington DC, where she
works as a news producer. Real Talk with Rachel is published on All Life is
Local and the Cleveland Park Listserv, www.cleveland-park.com,
on Wednesdays. Need advice? You can write to Rachel via http://bit.ly/realtalkwithrachel or
via www.cleveland-park.com or at advice @ fastmail.net.
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