This is a hypothetical. I’m more or less asking this wondering if this is “sexist” thinking or not.
The woman: (We’ll call her Juliet) She was in a serious relationship with a guy. Despite taking proper precautions the woman winds up getting pregnant anyway. Our dear sweet Romeo finds out about this and heads for the hills. Never to be seen again.
FF a couple of months later, Juliet meets a fine young fellow in a cooking class she enrolled in. (We’ll call him HG handsome guy) Juliet and HG quickly find a connection with each other. It’s an instant attraction. The feelings run deep and they run strong.
FF a month later. Juliet and HG finally and sheepishly admit their romantic feelings towards the other. The couple up until this point have spent loads of time together but they have always kept it platonic up until now.
After spending the whole day together first going to the museum, a walk in the park and finally a nice dinner ending up at HG’s place; they confess their love.
Things start to heat up as they kiss each other passionately. Then from out of nowhere, HG withdraws and says to Juliet: “I don’t feel this is right. I think we should wait til after the pregnancy before we continue further with this relationship.”
When Juliet asks why, HG expresses his concern that although he knows his feeling are true for her, he can’t be sure her’s are true as she is pregnant and the hormones might be affecting her judgement.
So, is HG an ass? Ladies, if you were this woman what would you do?
I would most likely just figure that if he was the kind of man to think that women can’t think straight because of hormones, then he wasn’t for me. And he wouldn’t be.
I don’t think I’d accuse a woman of not understanding her own hormones to that extent. I’ve been married to a pregnant woman and as Ludy sort of mentioned, they might make her think she likes you for a few minutes when she really doesn’t, but not fall in love. Like other hormonal things (to the best of my limited knowledge of such matters) they tend to come and go.
If I was going to have reservations about dating someone pregnant, it wouldn’t be that she thinks she loves me but really doesn’t, it would be that she’s trying to find someone to help her raise her child and that’s what she sees in me. Someone stable, decent job, house car etc rather then someone that she would see herself with if she wasn’t pregnant. My other fear would be that the real father would show up after the child was born and she would get back together with him. I would be especially worried about this since he took off the second he found out she was pregnant since he might come back after he’s had some time to come to terms with it. It might be different if they broke up for reasons unrelated to the pregnancy.
I suppose if I were in HG’s shoes and I wasn’t sure if her intentions were ‘pure’ I might just mention that I want to wait until after the child is born to continue the relationship because I wanted to see how things flesh out with the dad…or something along those lines.
Also, to Alice and Ludy, you have to remember, you know how your hormones work, HG might not.
Also, to Shakes/HG, I’d be curious as to if Juliet has heard from the dad at anytime in the last few months and how she’s reacted to it? Also, you mentioned HG feels Juliet’s intentions might not be ‘pure’, but why? Is everything perfect, but he’s just assuming there’s something wrong or are there signs pointing to there being problems/motives/non-pure intentions?
According to the timeline, Juliet would have been 2-3 months pregnant when she found out and told Romeo. A couple months later she meets HG, and they hang around for a month before they date.
By this time Juliet would be about 6 months pregnant. If HG is at all worried about her hormones it should be because they might lead Juliet to possibly kill him for getting that far with a pregnant woman whose boyfriend ditched her.
Couldn’t the same be said about dating any single mother?
Dating a pregnant woman at least has the upside of making it easier for the child to accept you as their real daddy. @OP - are you roughly the same ethnicity as the biological father?
What? No. I think you missed my point entirely.
A single mother would be another hypothetical entirely so we can leave that aside. This was very specifically about dating a woman that got pregnant and upon letting the man know she was pregnant he promptly left. In that specific scenario I could see being concerned that she was more interested in finding someone to help raise the child then someone that she would otherwise want to be with. In that specific scenario I could see being worried about the father showing back up after he comes to terms with the situation.
I’m not sure why you are talking about the child accepting HG as it’s own father.
And you think single mothers don’t have the same ‘issues’.
[ul]
[li]They might still comprimise with a relatively less attractive guy to get help raising the child.[/li][li]The POS excuse of a biological father might still return, even if the child has been born.[/li][/ul]
I suspect that, in that hypothetical scenario, that the ‘pregnancy hormones’ worry was an inept cover for not wanting to get too involved, too fast. But I mean, come on; if he’d had any worries at all about any of it he wouldn’t have started anything in the first place. I’m pretty sure there must be a male-oriented survival trait that says ‘Don’t bait the pregnant lady’.
We’re not talking about single mothers so it doesn’t really matter. It you want to talk about that, you’d have to define the hypothetical like the OP did. I responded to a very, very specific hypothetical and I’m not going to let my answer be applied to a generic “single mother” hypothetical as well. Come up with a scenario, create a thread and I’m sure you’ll get some discussion on the topic.
When did the dad leave? Why did he leave? How old is the kid? Those where what we were given in this example.
Even so, every single mother is going to be different. I’m sure there are some that are specifically cruising for a sugar daddy to give them money to raise their kid with and some with the same ‘specs’ that are looking for true love but still plan to raise the child by their own means. All we can do is talk and discuss possibilities.
In the OP, after reading Alice and Ludy’s post, I’d say that HG was incredibly ignorant as far as how female hormones effect a woman’s judgement. These feelings, I’m ashamed to admit, are transferable to my own.
Thanks, to Alice and Ludy for ignorance fought.
However, I digress. After reading Joey’s post, there would be a whole other slew of doubts that might creep up into my mind. And for the sake of this thread, we’ll say HG’s as well.
He’s an ass for playing with her expectations. Per the OP it’s not like she’s stalking him, he decided to pursue the relationship with her.
The ‘your hormones might be affecting your mind’ stuff, even if it’s true, is pure, unadulterated grade A bullshit with respect to the real reason he wants to back burner the relationship. He’s scared he’s gotten in too deep, too fast, and as her due date approaches this is his little fig leaf to put some distance between himself and her.
In my opinion, no, the same could not be said. A single mother has already gotten used to the idea that she’ll be raising the child on her own. She *is *raising the child on her own. Unless she just recent gave birth, she’s already made it through the sleepless nights of infancy and fallen into a routine. Another set of hands might make a nice addition, but the fear of doing it on her own would be mostly subsided.
I would think that a woman who is still pregnant, however, would still have that fear. She got pregnant, she thinks Romeo will stick around, and when he doesn’t she freaks out. How is she going to handle it by herself?! And then HG shows up and she thinks, “Hurray! I might not have to be alone in this!”
Again, just my opinion. Not meant to be a scientific observation.
I don’t like that. Unless you know the HG personally you’re in no position whatsoever to say that he understands how hormones work. Is it not possible that HG truly thinks that ‘your hormones might be affecting your mind’ is the reason she likes him? It’s not fair of you to decide that he was lying and I have no idea why you think you have the authority to decide what the real reason was.
Sexism aside, I’d frankly question the maturity of a guy who has been friends with a girl for one month, gone on a single date, and then confessed his love to her. And he doesn’t have all those pesky hormones to be concerned with, so what’s his excuse?
If you are really and truly in love with someone you aren’t going to be encouraging them to take a breather for biochemical reasons. The notion is utterly absurd. It’s an excuse for him to get some distance and perspective on the relationship.
I don’t know. Let’s say you’ve been friends with a girl who has always been in a committed relationship with her long time BF. One day, this girl and BF have a bad fight and split up. She calls to you for comfort. You two go out and have a few drinks to forget about the BF. She gets a little tipsy and says “fuck it lets have sex. You’re the one I’ve always liked anyway.”
Are you saying you would have no reservations under these circumstances? Especially if you had true feelings for this girl?
This is a good time for the “he’s just not that in to you” school of thought. When a man wants to be with a woman, he finds a way to be with that woman. He isn’t going to risk losing the woman he loves for much of anything.
If a man finds a way not to be with you, he doesn’t want to be with you. ALL explainations boil down to “I don’t want to be with you right now.” Think about this- if there was another pregnant lady that he was just over the moon about (let’s say she is a super witty Parisian model-turned-writer who makes love like a porn star and can keep fascinating conversations going for hours) he would probably find a way to be with her, right? It would be hard to imagine walking away from something that great.
Well, if he really likes you, you *are[\i] that great and he’s not gonna walk away fom you.
So I’d say he was a bit of a jerk for bringing in an emotional element that he had to know in his heart that he couldn’t follow through with. Don’t tell people you love them and want to be with them if you don’t intend to be with them. Now she is going to be all heartbroken for no reason.
