What kind of love can you find online?
I didn’t get what I thought I deserved — thankfully
In 2014, when I woke up one morning to find myself a single, four-month-pregnant woman, I figured it was bound to happen and exactly what I deserved.
I had a habit of dating assholes. I went from one abusive relationship to the next. What many of my friends designate my ‘best relationship’ was with a belligerent alcoholic who would get drunk and criticize every aspect of my physical appearance and presentation.
I was too fat, my hair was too thick, my hips were too wide, my boobs were too big, my nose was awful and small, and if only I were hotter (like I was when I used to dance ballet), he would propose. If only my outward appearance matched my brains, I would be a (his words) ‘package deal.’ I put up with this for three years, because I really and truly thought he was the best I could do. I didn’t know that I deserved to be treated with respect — to be honest, it hadn’t even occurred to me.
It has since occurred to me. No person should be treated that way — by anyone, ever.
When I met my ex (the ‘sperm donor’ for my daughter), he was different. He was always telling me how beautiful and wonderful I was. He rarely, if ever, drank, and he was more of a homebody. It was a nice change from the typical men I’d dated. Since he wanted to take things slowly, we waited nearly seven months to have sex. I moved in with him the week after that, and things began to spiral downward.
He began showing serious jealously over other male friends liking my photos on Facebook, or my male coworker texting me about work stuff. He started trying to control the ways I dressed, how I acted around him. One day, while I was at work, he ransacked my closet and drawers, tossing out all the clothes he deemed ‘too slutty.’
In the back of my mind, I knew this wasn’t healthy, nor the basis for a good relationship, but I stayed.
The beginning of the end was the night I was to accompany him to a work party at the university where he taught. He picked out my dress, my shoes, dictated how I should wear my hair. I stood by his side, quiet and sober throughout the evening, until we ran into a previous lover of mine.
My former lover and I ended on good terms, and so when we saw each other, we were friendly, causing my ex to completely lose his composure — he loudly accused me of sleeping with people at the party, people at the university, all the men in Houston, et cetera (my internal response: 🙄).
I was a ‘slut’ now, and no longer worthy of him. We lived together, so we both wound up back at home, and once there, I tried calmly talking to him. He paced in the bedroom, sipping tea (no mean feat — we lived in a tiny, 400-sq-ft apartment, and it takes skill to pace in such a confined space).
I was told that our relationship was over and that I needed to find an alternative living situation as soon as possible. So I packed my belongings and by the end of the week, I was gone.
Three weeks later, I discovered I was pregnant. I wrestled with whether to tell him or not, or whether to just go to a clinic and have an abortion. I made the appointment and told him to come with me, which he did. He also offered to pay for the procedure.
When I was called back to the exam room for the ultrasound, I saw the flutter of the heartbeat for the first time.
As I pressed my hand to my flat abdomen, I decided I didn’t want to have an abortion.
I wanted this baby.
My ex persuaded me to go home with him, and there, he tried to talk me out of having the baby. He promised we would make our relationship work — if I had an abortion. Things would be different this time — if I had an abortion. He promised me the sun, moon, stars and comets — if, and only if, I had an abortion.
He couldn’t believe a pro-choice feminist would want to keep the baby in our situation. He failed to understand what exactly the ‘choice’ in pro-choice entails — freedom from pressure and coercion in making the decision whether or not to terminate a pregnancy.
What he didn’t get is that ‘pro-choice’ means any and every choice a woman makes about her own body is, by fiat, the correct choice, simply by virtue of being her choice.
I moved back in with family and still talked to my ex occasionally. He went to my OB/GYN appointments with me, and meanwhile, we discussed the logistics of how it all would work once the baby was born.
But our amicable ‘friendship’ ended at my ultrasound, once the baby’s sex was determined. The baby I had growing in my uterus had a vagina, clear as day, and my ex was devastated. He demanded the tech recheck, and then recheck again (he also failed to understand what ‘checking’ meant — I reiterate that I could see her anatomy on the screen). He was insistent — his firstborn would not be a girl.
He dropped me off at home, and I didn’t hear from him again.
Being pregnant and single was lonely. There was no one to share all the ‘pregnant moments’ with, the first kicks, the ultrasounds, the baby names, guessing the hair and eye colors. Even though I knew what I was signing up for, it was extremely lonely and depressing.
So I signed up for online dating. I didn’t know how it would work, or if it could work at all while I was very obviously pregnant, but I figured I had nothing to lose.
I received a sweet message one night. His profile was intriguing, but the site’s compatibility algorithm only gave us a sixty percent score. I was also concerned because he was from Venezuela, and the stereotype I subscribed to at the time said that men from South America were like the men I had dated from North America — chauvinistic jerks. At that point, I’d had plenty.
I continued to chat with him, though, giving numerous excuses as to why I could never meet in public. After I had my daughter, I was a bit busy recovering from major surgery (c-section), and didn’t have the time to reply to his messages and I ignored my online dating profile.
In December, when my daughter was close to a month old, I received a very sweet Merry Christmas and Happy New Year message from this man. His sweet persistence got me thinking that it might be time to reach out to him and see if anything would happen. I had told him I had a daughter, but never told him her age, which was obviously a shock once he realized I had been pregnant while we were chatting (and it explained my absence).
He admitted he was still legally married and in the middle of a divorce. We both had some ‘baggage,’ as some people call it. We took things slowly: one date a week while my mom babysat.
It was nice dating someone who treated me well. He met my daughter when she was four months old, and I met his parents. We traveled together as a family, and after a year of dating, I moved into his house in the suburbs. A few months later I missed my period (which was strange since I had a copper IUD), and I prepared myself for the worst. I ate all the chocolate in the house, and was an absolute emotional mess as I thrust the pee-stick with the obvious “PREGNANT” written for him to see.
He grabbed the test from me, looked at it a minute, and stood up to embrace me with tears in his eyes! This wasn’t the reaction I had expected!
Exactly one year later, we married at the romantic, bohemian bar where we had our first date.
It was perfect.
Some days, I’m still in shock with how my life turned out (is turning out). I met my perfect match, and he means the world to me. At our first anniversary party, we announced that my husband was adopting my daughter, and was officially her legal father. I never thought I would be one of those happily married, monogamous, ‘family people,’ but it happened.
Final Thoughts
I had a difficult childhood and young-adulthood filled with multiple abuses. I never thought I deserved happiness. I never thought it would ‘happen’ for me. I believed my life would just be filled with more bad relationships, more abuse, more hurt.
But that didn’t happen.
It might feel like you will never find your happiness, but you can! A good start: don’t settle for anyone or anything that consistently or primarily hurts you or brings you tears. No one is ‘broken,’ and your past does not define who you are as a person. We all deserve to be happy!
