Does my husband have PPD?

mandamayre · March 2011

I will try to give the most succinct explanation I can of a very complicated back story, but here goes:

My husband has essentially abandoned me and I am 32 weeks pregnant. He is still paying the bills and he is still going to work, but I have not seen him for 3 of the past 4 weeks. He doesn't call me and has waffles between wanting a divorce and thinking that it has nothing to do with me, it's all about him. When we first started talking about what was going on, he said he's felt this way for about a year. I told him while he may have been sad for about a year, his behaviors had only changed to become disturbing and erratic about 5 months ago (when I started to show. I'm a behavior analyst by the way, so I was taking behavioral notes on him basically as soon as he started doing very uncharacteristic things).

I have been seeing a personal therapist, as has he, and we are attempting couples counseling (although he's only gone once, and I've gone 3 times). The theory is he feels very threatened by the baby. He had an awful relationship with his parents growing up and had been estranged from them for over 4 years (they weren't even invited to our wedding). He has gone so far as to ask me to have an abortion (I was about 15 weeks when he did that), and then when I first saw all this inappropriate behaviors come to a zenith, he suggested that we put her up for adoption (I was about 28 weeks then). We PLANNED this pregnancy.

In the past week, he decided to contact his parents and has been staying with them (remember, haven't spoken to them in 4 years). The therapists believe that your parents are your first source of safety, then when they don't fulfill that (due to abuse or neglect or whatever), your spouse eventually becomes your source of safety. When an infant enters the picture, that source of safety is threatened because that infant will take all the attention off the spouse, leaving the spouse exposed and alone.

So my husband literally wants to get rid of the baby in order to keep me for himself.

Has ANYONE experienced ANYTHING like this?! My husband has always had an insatiable need for attention, and had said in the past (I thought jokingly...) "when we have a baby, you'll give all your attention to the baby and I'll be forgotten".

Please help.

haleymay18 · March 2011

Sounds like he is battling depression. I think you need to sit down with him and tell him how you feel. That is very hard and I am very sorry you are experiencing this.