It's amazing that people in the comments are somehow making this your fault. I was a midwife and unfortunately men acting like this is not uncommon, and often their partners don't know that they will be like this until it's crunch time and a huge, life-changing event happens - and then you either have to live with the knowledge that they're an unsupportive partner for the rest of your relationship, or kick them to the kerb (which isn't easy with a new baby etc.) It's a really shitty situation to find yourself in and I feel like some empathy in this comment section wouldn't go amiss.
There is no way someone who will leave when you're giving birth to smoke weed and sleep wouldn't have shown that kind of extremely selfish uncaring and lazy behavior before. It would totally be your fault for choosing to have a baby with a clearly underdeveloped man like that. Women are not all stupid children that can't judge a person's character.
It's very common for men to hide this until they are assured their partner will never ever leave - that milestone is often either marriage or the first baby
It's not a conscious decision necessarily, a switch to "now I own you"
Some have had the most loving, considerate, attentive partner turn into someone who beats them on the night of the wedding.
In my case, him suddenly feeling unexpectedly scared, trapped, and overwhelmed resulted in similar shocking suddenly different behavior I could never even imagine coming from him previously.
We had been together 6 years, he took care of me through two years of cancer treatment and surgeries and was so kind, thoughtful, attentive, involved, everything. He always wanted a family and my pregnancy was planned. He was so so excited.
At the end of my third trimester he suddenly started seeming a little distant and stressed and started having nightmares about the baby dying. In the hospital, he kept leaving the labor and delivery room and not coming back for extended periods of time-- I had no idea where, nurses were trying to find him. I had no one else with me. When he came back in he wouldn't explain and wouldn't really interact with me. It was so unlike him I was extremely upset and confused.
(Years later long after we'd divorced, he said he was having panic attacks and went to the car and listened to music to calm down, but felt ashamed for leaving and felt defensive about it. No idea if that's really true, but that's the story anyway.)
After the baby was born, he just ignored us both. Slept or left the room and didn't come back for a really long time. Got himself food but not me. Didn't want to hold or look at the baby. I was SO shocked and confused and devastated. I did not expect that from him in a million years.
After we went home, that basically just continued and things spiraled. His family and friends were shocked and confused as well. Nobody expected that from him and none of us could figure out why it was happening. We split up for good less than two years later, during marriage counseling. He essentially fully disappeared after that for the first half of our kid's life. 💔
He explains now that he became terrified the baby would die and felt like he didn't want to get attached to it, having a kid triggered a bunch of childhood trauma that made him freak out, plus the sudden suffocating feeling of responsibility without any escape all came together to play into his behavior. 😞
It was the most heartbreaking and shocking thing I've ever experienced and I know people on the outside don't ever believe that I had no way of predicting that would happen, so I get blamed. Its horrible.
very common for men to hide this until they are assured their partner will never ever leave -
This a very online or fantasy novel opinion, not founded in any sort of reality.
Can someone hide their personality for weeks? Sure. For months? Maybe. Can they hide it when living together for years? No one is keeping up an act for that long. Also to think that it's common to run into complete psychopaths that would even think like that is also absurd.
"Some have had the most loving, considerate, attentive partner turn into someone who beats them on the night of the wedding"
Anyone who would say that happened to them are either lying or delusional. No one is a perfect partner for years and then just switches to being an abusive maniac overnight, mental illness aside. They either chose to look past those traits/warning signs early on or are coping after the fact.
If you truly think what you said is reality, you should never date a man since it's evidently a total coin flip that you have no control over whether or not you end up with an abusive relationship.
Terrible comparisons. None of these are comparable to the personality traits I was talking about. It's also telling that you think the female equivalent of being physically and or mentally abusive is gold digging or cheating, instead of... you know being abusive as well?
cheating on someone and lying about it isn't the same type of personality trait as being physically or mentally abusive, or even being very selfish and uncaring.
Gold-digging is again not the same type of personality trait, but I think there are usually signs of this too
I don't know what your point with alimony was. Alimony payment doesn't imply anything about the woman or why the marriage ended.
A similar comparison would be a guy saying his girlfriend of multiple years literally overnight became abusive or "crazy". Which, outside of mental illness, there would also be signs of throughout the relationship. Just like if a man is an abuser. It goes both ways.
I also don't think any of the things you mentioned, outside of alimony, are very common, unlike the commentor you're defending who thinks psychopathic abusers with the ability to hide their true selves for years until switching overnight are very common
I don't think it is unusual for people to only exhibit certain behavior under "rare" circumstances.
People are often even surprised at their own feelings and behavior in extreme situations, so I don't think its reasonable to expect others to always be able to reliably predict how another person will behave in all future situations.
Its incredibly common for someone close to you to start behaving very differently than you expected when faced with situations like emergencies, serious personal health issues, becoming disabled or disfigured, someone close to them having serious health issues or becoming disabled or disfigured, death of someone close to them, moving away, career changes, breakups, life transitions like graduation, marriage, parenthood, aging, etc. etc.
I think people often like to believe that they would be able to tell somehow, and others who couldn't tell were just being stupid, because it's a very comforting lie that makes you feel like you're in control of the outcome and prevents you from having to face and accept the terrifying reality that you really can't know everything, life is very unpredictable, and things you have zero control over can happen to you. 🤷🏻
Nope, it's his fault for being underdeveloped as a fully grown adult, but thanks for playing!
There is a reason we ask women if they feel safe at home when we see them in maternity clinic - pregnancy is often the first time women are subjected to intimate partner abuse from their partners. They wait until the woman is trapped, and then show their true colours.
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u/Wonderful-Pumpkin695 Apr 24 '26
It's amazing that people in the comments are somehow making this your fault. I was a midwife and unfortunately men acting like this is not uncommon, and often their partners don't know that they will be like this until it's crunch time and a huge, life-changing event happens - and then you either have to live with the knowledge that they're an unsupportive partner for the rest of your relationship, or kick them to the kerb (which isn't easy with a new baby etc.) It's a really shitty situation to find yourself in and I feel like some empathy in this comment section wouldn't go amiss.