My nesting partner had an abortion from another boyfriend. How would you guys deal with it?

G

Garam

New member
Hi!

My nesting partner and I have been in a relationship for a few years. During the past year, she has developed a new relationship that ended up last week in an abortion. She took the decision by herself. With the timing, we knew the child wasn't mine. It was a surprise for everyone involved.

We had plans to get kids at some point, but my partner has period issues and assumed she would never have kids.

I have been feeling a bit... helpless about the whole situation. Part of me feels the guilt that maybe it was our chance for a kid and part of me feels sad that it wasn't mine and I wouldn't want the kid. (She was travelling when she told me and had already made her decision.) I feel grief, but mostly pain for her and some internal turmoil in my head about the whole thing.

I have felt this new guy was a bit too intense, from what I'm used to, but I was also happy she had found a new love.

Right now, I'm trying to do the best I can to support her. But it's been pretty tough on her. She's grieving. I realize she feels guilt and shame, but some happiness because she can bear a kid. She now feels motherly versus not at all before.

Has anyone else been in this situation? I have no one to talk to and share relatable experiences, as we don't have poly friends in our city. I'm just trying to be a good partner and I feel I'm failing at this.

Cheers.
 
Hello Garam,

To be honest, your title question seems somewhat odd. I would think you would breathe a sigh of relief if your nesting partner got that abortion. Had she carried the child to term, that would have made things more complicated.

I don't think there's a lot you can do to comfort/support your nesting partner during this difficult time. She probably needs some space. You can of course tell her, "Please tell me if there's anything I can do to help, I want to help."

Above all, let the decision to abort (or not) be her decision, don't try to analyze or pass judgment on it, she made the right choice by definition. Let her feelings be the ones that matter in this situation. Be there for her, but give her space.

Hang in there.
Regards,
Kevin T.
 
What a tough thing to go through. It sounds like you both want children, but didn‘t think she could have them. As a result, this was a big surprise to everyone.

It’s hard to process your feelings about it, because you want kids, but aren’t sure if you could love another man’s child the same. At the same time, you weren’t able to process any of that, because she decided and had the abortion before talking to you about it and giving time for you to process. That probably added to the difficulty of the emotions you feel about the pregnancy, as well.

I wonder if this was a hasty decision she made because she “thought” she was doing what was best in this non-traditional relationship setting. That may be adding to her grief, especially if she was hasty, then found out you had mixed, but possibly positive, feelings about the pregnancy.

It sounds like you two should talk about and process this together. (After she is done grieving, of course.) It’s too bad she didn’t give it the time to allow that to happen before choosing to end the pregnancy. If she had, maybe things would feel very different emotionally, even if the outcome might have still been the same.

I cannot assume why she chose to end it without talking to you about it first, but maybe this can be the start of a conversation about how to handle things if it were to happen in the future.

- What if we talked about it? Would she/I feel differently about the pregnancy?
- What if she wanted to keep the baby? What if I wanted to keep it?
- What if it’s mine/not mine? Does it matter?
- Can I be happy coparenting with another of her partners, whether the child is mine or not?
- How does she feel about it? What does she want and why?
- Can I support her in what she wants?

This is a difficult situation for everyone and each person will have their own feelings about it. Treat yourself and each other with kindness, and once you’ve healed, then dig deep and let your feelings about this experience help you all to become informed if it should happen again.
 
Back in the 1960s, my father and his first wife had an abortion (illegal in the US at the time). They had married young and were still in college. They knew it was not the right time to have a baby and they also suspected they weren't the right life partners for each other.

They both wanted to have kids later. They both grieved deeply when they had the abortion and felt guilt from their religious upbringings (the same religious upbringings that had told them not to use birth control, incidentally). They worried about their choices and wondered if they had done the right thing.

They finished their education, built their careers (both became doctors), divorced a few years later, and by the late 1970s they were happily married to other people. With their new partners they each had children in the 1980s--children that would not have been born had they decided to continue with their first pregnancy.

My dad told me about this when I was a teenager so I would understand that I would have options. That I should use birth control, but if it failed I had options and if I ever needed to choose abortion, I would still have a happy life ahead of me and the possibility of future children.

You and your nesting partner can still have children someday. She decided that now was not the right time and not the right partner/father. No need to overthink it.

When you're both done grieving, you should probably both make appointments with doctors to understand your respective fertility situations better. She thought she couldn't get pregnant because of "period issues"--she could look into that more and see what's going on. If she never became pregnant with you but had not been using birth control, it would be worth having your sperm count checked.

Regardless, you can still find a way to have children together when the time is right.

In the meanwhile, support her autonomy to make a decision about her own body and her own future, even if you felt left out of that decision. (Depending on where she sought the abortion, she may have had to make a quick decision in the face of abortion restrictions after a certain number of weeks of pregnancy).
 
Questions I have:

What is it in your partner's character that would make her find out she was pregnant and abort before telling you about it? You two nest, but she was away from home for so long she'd missed a period/periods, taken a pregnancy test (despite her "period problems," by which you might mean irregularity), and had the abortion somewhere, all before returning to you?

If she has irregular periods, she may not be firing eggs regularly. Maybe she only ovulates every few months, or less. Have you two been having unprotected sex for some time without pregnancy? Has she been having unprotected sex with her bf, or was there condom failure?

If it were me, if I'd been trying to conceive for X amount of years without pregnancy, and then suddenly got pregnant, even if it weren't with my nesting partner, and I sorely wanted a kid, I personally would have taken it as a blessing and gone ahead and let the pregnancy run its course, hopefully to term, no matter who the bio dad was. I'd have also talked to my partners about the fact that I am not using condoms and don't think I can get pregnant, but one never knows. Especially if I have not seen a fertility specialist and knew no more than that I had "period problems."

I just hope she hasn't been rash in ending a rare chance for her body to actually conceive. Just because she got pregnant this once, if she's not ovulating regularly (or much at all), she might not get pregnant easily again.
 
I'm sorry. This sounds hard.

I see that you want to be there for her, and support her. But maybe slow down? Go from you first and then outward to other layers?
  • You are going to have your grief and your process.
  • She has her own grief and her own process.
  • Her other partner will have their grief and their process.
  • Then you + her will have whatever shared grief and shared process.
  • Then her + other partner will have whatever shared grief and shared process.
I'm not sure all these layers are something you can all help each other through instantly. I suspect you have to put your own oxygen mask on first.

Maybe if you need more support, you could talk to a counselor about all this? Or you and her do couple counseling?

She will have to sort what to do with her other partner on that side of the V separately.

Galagirl
 
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