Pregnant Woman Working Extra Hours At Work Says She Neglected Her Unemployed Husband To The Point That He Left Her
He got fed up with 'being ignored' and moved out — but that was just the beginning of the story.
aslysun / Shutterstock.com Pregnancy and preparing to welcome a new baby brings all kinds of challenges to soon-to-be parents, but for one expectant woman on Reddit, her husband didn't handle things very well at all.
A pregnant woman working overtime thought she neglected her unemployed husband so badly that he left her.
There's no doubt about it that pregnancy changes everything, including a couple's relationship. And a mom on Reddit named Carla and her husband Harry are no exception.
In a Reddit post, Carla wrote that on top of her pregnancy, she's been working tons of overtime at work due to a massive project and as a way to save up money for once the baby comes. That hasn't left much time for… well, anything really, and while Carla didn't realize it was even a problem, it quickly came to a head.
Her husband left her on their anniversary because he was tired of 'being ignored' and doing all the housework.
Carla thought she was helping them both when she suggested a quiet night in for their anniversary since she's exhausted from work and Harry does all the housekeeping for them. But right off the bat, she could tell something was off.
"The next morning, Harry seemed quite cold towards me and barely looked me in the eyes," she wrote. When she returned home, he wasn't there, which didn't arouse suspicion at first. But when she woke up near midnight with tons of missed calls and texts, she knew something was awry. "I understand how tired you are because of this pregnancy and you having to work extra hours most days," the text from Harry read, "but I'm over being ignored every day … I'm staying at a friend's tonight."
Carla said that she understood and even admitted "I've been distant" and preoccupied, but she was still having trouble figuring out what exactly she did wrong. But soon, it all became clear.
When her husband never came home, Carla found out he'd planned a vacation for them, and then left without her.
In a follow-up post, Carla shared that Harry all but disappeared for nearly two weeks — long enough that she drove to his friend's house and "banged on the door so hard I could hear it echo from inside."
When the friend finally came to the door, Carla learned what had actually happened, "a thing that I found absolutely hilarious (but actually not at all)."
In a bid to reignite the spark in their marriage, Harry had planned a getaway to Ireland — paid for out of their savings — and then taken his sister Tiff instead. Tiff was able to talk some sense into her brother and get him to come home, and that's when the truth finally came out and upended everything.
Harry admitted that he stopped loving Carla when she got pregnant.
It turned out it wasn't the neglect, the fact that she was working overtime or any of those other things that had sparked her husband's outburst. "He confessed that he'd stopped loving me a month into my pregnancy," she wrote.
Photo: LittleBee80 from Getty Images / Canva Pro
"It wasn't to do with the fact that I was sick all the time, dirty as a mole, or wouldn't stop talking about the baby. He just didn't have a reason." The trip to Ireland, it turned out, "was to 'test the waters,'" she wrote. " It was to see if life would be better without me. He still hasn't decided."
But she has decided, especially since he never apologized for any of this drama. She's moved in with her mother and assured Harry that their relationship is over and that once the baby is born, she will be filing for divorce.
Science has found a potential link between pregnancy and divorce that is related to hormone levels.
Divorce during pregnancy is more common than you might think. The upheavals and stress it brings can frequently exacerbate pre-existing problems in a marriage and bring the relationship to the brink. Marriages that happen because of a pregnancy are particularly vulnerable to ending.
And like so many things during pregnancy, it might come down to hormones. A 2016 study at McGill University found pregnant women with lower levels of oxytocin, the so-called "bonding hormone," were more likely to end up divorced by the time the child was a toddler. And for each level of increased oxytocin, the chances of the mother's marriage surviving increased by seven times.
A divorce during pregnancy is of course traumatizing not just for the mother but also the unborn child, and some states don't even allow it.
Thankfully the U.K., where this mom lives, does not have such shocking legal overreach into women's personal lives, and she's able to begin remaking her life for her child. Both her mom and Harry's sister Tiff have rallied around her and promised to stay by her side through it all. Hopefully, that makes all the difference.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice, and human interest topics.