The Family I Dreamed Of — The Pain I Carried Instead

Chapter 1: When It Felt Safe to Dream

There was a time, however brief it was. When life with him almost felt like a family. He had started showing up more for our son. He was trying, or at least it looked like it. And in that season, I let my guard down. I let myself dream again. I thought, maybe... maybe this is it. Maybe the worst is behind us.

I didn’t see the cracks forming even then. The way he’d show up, only when it was convenient. The way he soaked up praise for things I was doing behind the scenes. But I wanted so badly to believe that healing was possible, that the dream I held close could finally become a reality. So, I ignored the warning signs and opened my heart to more.

We had a few quiet weekends, moments that looked like what I always wanted. Breakfasts with laughter, him playing with our sons, a few kind words and soft touches that made me think maybe we’d turned a corner. But those moments were fragile, only held together by my hope, not his actions. Because even in the peace, I was the one holding it all. I was the glue. And he… he was just passing through.

Chapter 2: The First Goodbye I Didn’t Want

Right as I found out I was pregnant, he started disappearing again, into the world of fishing trips and late-night escapism. I felt the shift starting again, I felt the emotional distance grow before I even told him the news.

At first, I felt a quiet joy. A flutter of hope that maybe this time would be different, that we’d grow our family and build on the love I thought we had. But that hope quickly un-raveled into anxiety. I found myself waiting up at night, wondering if he’d come home. I felt invisible again, like the pregnancy was just another inconvenience to him. My body changed while he remained absent, and I was left cradling a dream he didn’t want to hold with me.

And still, I sat across from him and shared the words: “I’m pregnant.” Hoping for something soft, something steady. But what I got was a cold, dismissive, “It’s not the time.” That sentence didn’t just end a conversation, it ended a piece of me. I made a decision to protect my children from more pain, even though it shattered my own heart.

Chapter 3: A Second Loss, A Second Silence

Months passed. I began to heal physically. I thought I was emotionally mending too. Until I realized I was pregnant again. My body and my soul they still longed for that big family. For love and hope.

This time I wanted to fight for it. I believed maybe God was giving me another chance. But instead, I faced judgment, ridicule, and pressure, not only from him, but from the people he surrounded himself with. I felt like a burden. Honestly like a mistake. The decision wasn’t made in freedom, but in fear and I walked back into that clinic knowing I was being pushed into silence again.

The second time broke me differently. I felt like I was floating through my own life, going through the motions for my boys while silently bleeding on the inside. No one saw it. Not one friend asked, and many didn’t know. I cried alone at night and put on a brave face in the daylight. I had to pretend I was okay, because I didn’t know how to explain a grief that no one wanted to acknowledge and worst of all, he never once asked how I was feeling, only if I was “over it yet.”

Chapter 4: The Final Blow I Didn’t Survive the Same

The third time was different. I found out at 6 weeks along, after my cycle hadn’t been normal I didn’t expect it let alone guess what was coming.

When I finally told him at 8 weeks along, I was prepared for apathy. What I didn’t expect was manipulation. He dangled “fun” like a distraction. Dragged me to nights out, surrounded me with people pretending to care, while whispering that I couldn’t do this. That we didn’t have space, that it wasn’t the right time again. Leaving false promise of again. I walked into the clinic at 11 weeks and 6 days, and when I walked out, he didn’t take me home. He took me to a boat full of people pretending everything was fine, while I sat on the back deck with nothing left inside me.

I didn’t feel like a person anymore, I felt like a passenger in someone else’s reckless life. That day marked the beginning of the end. I smiled and nodded through the noise on the boat, but inside, I was screaming, I was crying, I was listening to the cracks in my heart. My silence that day wasn’t strength. It was surrender and from that moment forward, something inside me never came back.

Chapter 5: The Intimacy I Couldn’t Fake Anymore

After that third abortion, I couldn’t let him touch me again. Something in me shut down, not just physically and over all spiritually.

Everything he once used to draw me in now made my skin crawl. The trust was gone. The love was gone. I began making excuses to avoid intimacy, I even took advantage of my youngest boys, illness and exhaustion to go to bed when early and cuddle him to sleep as he wasn’t breathing the best at the time.  This was a blessing at the time, to be able to love my baby and heal with protection. Anything to protect what little of myself I had left. Every night I laid beside my boys and found comfort in their safety, a safety I could no longer find in my marriage.

Chapter 6: The Life That Broke Quietly

After that, we weren’t a couple. We weren’t even partners. We were strangers with kids. I existed to keep the house clean and the boys fed. He existed to play, and be the best mother I could be and pretend to be happy with him.

He lived as a bachelor in a house built for a family. While I stayed up all night folding laundry, prepping lunches, comforting nightmares, he was drunk, and off his face on a boat. The loneliness didn’t come from being physically alone, it came from knowing I was married, but completely unseen and yet, I kept showing up. Because that’s what mothers do.

Chapter 7: The Sinister Behind My Smile

While I joined a football team and I was at games, I believed I was just tired. I thought my boys were unsettled because of the shift. But my youngest became aggressive and my eldest went quiet.

It was my first time doing something for myself in years, joining a local over-30s mums' football team. It gave me one night a week to laugh, run, and breathe outside the heaviness of home. I thought this small outlet would help me show up even better for my kids. I thought taking care of myself in small ways would model something healthy for them. But I didn’t realize that the peace I felt while kicking that ball around was hiding something much darker waiting for me back at home.

The truth was darker than I let myself imagine. My boys weren’t reacting to my absence, they were responding to the presence of danger. The same man who helped create one of my babies, was breaking them both down, emotionally and mentally. I had no idea, the guilt is something I still carry because I believed I was taking time for me, when really, I was leaving them alone with a storm.

Affirmation

I am not weak for dreaming.
I am not wrong for loving.
I am powerful for surviving.
I give myself permission to grieve what never was and to rise anyway.

I am powerful for surviving. I give myself permission to grieve what never was and to rise anyway.

Closing Prayer

Dear God, meet me in the ache that words can’t touch. Hold the babies I never got to raise, and mend the parts of me that shattered in silence. Restore my joy. Restore my peace. And guide me gently toward the life You always meant for me. Ame