I thought I was building a life with the father of my baby — until a trip to the grocery store exposed just how wrong I was. What happened next, in front of a shelf of bread, changed everything. When I found out I was pregnant, I was 31 and hopeful.
Jack and I had been dating for almost two years, and for a while, it felt like the relationship was heading somewhere real. But months into my pregnancy, my boyfriend started changing for the worse, leading me to wonder if I’d made a mistake staying with him. Jack and I were the kind of couple who spent Sunday mornings in bed talking about baby names and whether we’d raise our future kids with dogs, cats, or both.
We also discussed how we’d decorate a nursery and what kind of parents we’d want to be. I thought we were in love, as we used to hold hands at the grocery store. He’d say things like, “Can’t wait to have a little one who looks just like you,” and I believed him.
I thought we were on the same page. So when I stared down at that positive test, heart racing and palms sweaty, I was nervous but over the moon! I imagined the way I’d tell him—something sweet, maybe a cupcake with baby shoes on top.
Instead, I just blurted it out one night over dinner, too excited to wait! “I’m pregnant,” I said, barely above a whisper, eyes locked on his across the pasta I’d made. At the time, he was telling me about the tough day he had at work when I cut him off with my unexpected, for both of us, announcement.
Jack looked stunned for maybe two seconds, then stood, walked over, and hugged me so tightly I thought I might cry! “I’m ready to be a dad,” he said, and it sounded real. I trusted that, and for a while, it felt like everything I’d ever wanted was finally happening.
But trust has a way of cracking quietly, because his declaration changed fast. My boyfriend changed within weeks. The changes were not in big movie-scene ways.
There were no shouting matches or cheating scandals. It was smaller, meaner things like snide comments, eye rolls, and silence where laughter used to be. Almost overnight, Jack became someone I didn’t recognize.
He started criticizing and snapping at me over small things. Like my folding of towels, how long I spent in the shower, leaving dishes in the sink, and forgetting to turn off a light. The man I loved even got on my case about how I breathed!
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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