This is going to be very long, and very personal, so if you dont want to read way too much about my life, stop now.
When I was still a teenager, I got engaged to a girl who had left the mormon church; but herfamily were still active in a fundamentalist mormon splinter group. We had moved in together, and were making wedding plans, when she killed herself. Her family had driven her to it, because she was marrying outside the faith.
She was pregnant when she killed herself, and she hadn't told me. I don't know if she even knew.Ive told this story before, but I've never mentioned that detail.
I stayed away from other women for about a year after that, til I met the girl who I would marry. We were together for four years, married for two of them, and I never realized how mentally ill she was until we were already married, when she started getting worse and worse (and heavier and heavier. I met her at 5'3" and 160lbs, and by the time we split she was 305lbs). During our time together she had 5 miscarriages. We didnt use birth control for it's intended purpose, because she had been told she was unable to have children because of glandular/hormonal problems, but we tried using birth control to help control her hormones and her cycles. Well they didnt help very much, and they werent effective in preventing pregnancy. 5 times in four years she became pregnant without our noticing it until she had a painful miscarriage a couple months later. I think it was her final miscarriage that precipitated her last breakdown before I left for Ireland.
She was bi-polar, and pan-phobic with panic attack disorder. We had originally planned to go together, as a family; but her condition had worsened so much, I was afraid taking her to a foreign country would make her so bad she would kill herself. I asked her to get help, and she refused. Finally I told her that she had to get help, or I would leave her.
She refused.
The last time I saw her, I took her to her mothers with her saying she WOULD get help, and I went to Ireland to prepare the way for us both to move. After 8 weeks she called me. She had another miscarriage, and she was absolutely refusing to get help.
I haven't spoken with her directly since that day. We have only communicated by email a few times, though I have spoken with her mother. She attempted to commit suicide, and was involuntarily admitted to a psychiatric facility for three months.
I obtained a civil anullment on the grounds of undisclosed mental illness at the time of our marriage.
I still feel guilty about that... It was what I had to do, but that doesnt change the fact that I feel like I berayed her, gave up on her...
A few years ago I was very deeply in love with a woman. I had split with my wife a few months before, and I'd been with... actually more than a few girls since. I went a little wild, and I was with about 30 women in six months, but no-one serious.
This girl... I met her because of a wrong number text message, and we started talking, and we kept talking, and were in love within a few weeks, having never met each other in person. When we finally met a few weeks later we couldnt keep our hands off each other. We spent the weekend together, and didnt get out of bed for more than a few minutes. It was like that every time we were with each other for the next ... almost a year. We lived about 80 miles away from each other, so we mostly spent weekends together.
There were complications. She was 18, I was 24 (she was actually 17 when we first talked, and I was 23, but we didnt know that about each other yet, and it was in Ireland where that sort of thing is not unusual), and she lived at home, with her EXTREMELY controling mother, and her father who wouldnt stand up to his wife. But she truly loved her family, except for her mother, and oldest sister; especially her father. Very definitely a traditional "daddys little girl" lisa, and she couldnt bear to hurt him.
After a few months together, we decided that we were right for each other, and that we wanted to be together, for life. I had made the mistake of marrying someone I didnt really feel that way about before, believe me I wasnt blinded by lust, or being stupid, this was a woman I would kill or die for...
I'll be honest with you, I still would today. I have never felt this way about any other woman. I've loved others, I've felt deeply for others, but I've never felt like somene else was a part of me, and I of her like that. I've never opened myself like that before or since.
I love my mother, and my best friend, but today if you asked me who I would save in the sinking raft, it would be Lisa.
We also decided that we wanted to have children together, and we stopped using protection. Finally, she decided she was going to leave home, and move in with me. She was supposed to tell her family that she was going to do this, but she was too scared to, and she just went with me, without telling them.
It wasn't a good situation. Her family obviously freaked out. Though Lisa called them and told them her decision, and where she was, that she was OK etc... they were... irrational.
Her uncle is a senior Gardai (the police) official, and they tried to have him arrest me, or get me deported (no grounds, and I'm a citizen), which failed, btu I was harrassed for a fe wdays... anyway it wasn't good.
A few days later Lisa was kidnapped by her parents. She was going to meet them at a transport cafe, and when she was there, they drugged her and restrained her, then took her out to a relatives farm out in the middle of nowhere. They held her there against her will for several weeks. When they finally let her out, she called me, and told me they gave her an ultimatum. If she went with me, or ever spoke to me again, they would cut her off completely. She would never be allowed to see or speak to them ever again.
She told them that she would go with me, and she was calling me to pick her up...
I made the hardest choice of my life that moment; I told her no.
I loved her, and I wanted to be with her, but I knew what her family meant to her. I knew that if she was with me on those terms that she would hate me for it forever, and I couldnt take her away from her father and her brother and sisters like that.
Every few weeks she would sneak a call to me, or a text message. A few months went by, and she told me she had gotten drunk a few weeks after we were split up, and slept with a guy, and now she was pregnant...
I don't know if that child is really mine, or if it was actually the result of this drunken night. The timing was just too close... The thought of it right now is incredibly painful. I'm actually having chest pains thinking about it right now...
Just before I started writing this, I had a very disturbing conversation...
I've had an on again off again girlfriend for about a year now. Our relationship has really been just sexual; we care about each other, but we dont get along well enough to have a real long term relationship. We'll get close for a few weeks, or a month or two at a time, then we'll not talk with each other for a few weeks, maybe see someone else for a month or two etc...
All in all a comfortable, and not very serious relationship.
I haven't seen her since the week before the superbowl, when we had a lot of pretty good, and pretty rough, sex. I hadnt seen her for a few weeks before that, and then maybe a month before that.
Both of us are regualrly tested (every six months), and we used birth control(birth control pills, and spermicidal lubricant), so we regularly had unprotected sex, including that time.
She just called me up, and she told me that she was pregnant, and had an abortion (actually took an abortion pill) a few weeks ago; that at first she thought it was a guy she started seeing just after the superbowl, but that by the timing it had to be me, and that's why she hadn't called me. She wasn't planning on telling me, but she decided today to call and tell me.
Now we had discussed this before; what would happen if she were to get pregnant, what her thoughts, were, what mine were etc...
I've had this talk with all my partners I've had unprotected sex with, and most of my partners in general; minus the one nighters, and I'm prepared to accept the consequences of my actions, no matter what they are.
I believe that abortion for convenience is unquestionably morally wrong. I believe that while the woman is the most effected physically, that the father should have some input into the decision, (morally, not necessarily legally). I also believe that the law should stay entirely out of this entire area of our lives.
I honestly didnt know what to say. I still don't. I'm EXTREMELY upset by this.. so much so I can't put it into words.
She was so casual about it... and I know it wasn't just an act. She said "So I was pregnant, and I had an abortion" just as if she was saying "I had a hangnail, and I had it removed". I know she never wants any children of any kind, that she has odd beliefs and ideas... actually I think she might be mildly autistic, or she has aspergers syndrome; her reactions to are just... not right, is the best way of putting it I suppose but...
Like nothing at all; and she wasn't even going to tell me.
