'I just found out my ex is having a baby. Here's how I really feel about it.'

18 months ago, I got dumped. No, I didn’t see it coming. Not for a second.

We’d been together for almost three years, living together for one, and my ex was hardly the type to voice any emotions he was experiencing or things he was struggling with in the relationship, so I truly had no idea. 

I’d always been the dumper in my past relationships, so I was completely unprepared for the amount of pain and heartache that was in store. I spent six months processing, going to therapy, working through the grief and the loss. It didn’t necessarily get easier, I just got better at tolerating the pain, and eventually my eyes stopped leaking constantly, to the point where I could go about my day (relatively) normally.

What you need to listen to post-heartbreak, according to Fill My Cup. Article continues after podcast. 

Yet we remained in the same friendship group, and he’d continue to call me when he was upset about things happening in his life and needed comforting. It was all pretty toxic. 

I came to realise I wasn’t grieving the loss of him, I was grieving the life I’d thought we had planned: the marriage, kids (far down the track – at least five years away we’d agreed), the white picket fence. The things you’re supposed to want. 

Suddenly, that had all been ripped away from me, yet my other closest friends continued to get engaged and married, to announce pregnancies and new babies, to buy houses and live out the lifestyle I’d believed I too was destined for.

Naturally, I fled to the other side of the world to live out my dream life in New York for 18 months and enjoyed existing in denial far away from all of it. I’d completely cut contact with my ex, which turned out to be the best thing I ever did. 

The saying, “Out of sight, out of mind,” is hugely simplistic, yet there’s no denying how much of a relief it is to no longer run into the person you’re actively trying to avoid at social events, no longer see their name pop up on your phone, no longer invent excuses to run into them or call them about something “urgent”. Sure it’s harder initially, but it’s also the number one piece of advice I’d give to anyone going through a breakup: cut the contact, cut the crap.

So while I pranced around New York living my new fairytale, I developed a very avoidant, dissociated approach to my old life. I didn’t enjoy talking to most of my friends because they represented a connection to my ex. I couldn’t imagine going back to my old life, being surrounded by my friends who were now wives and mothers. 

In short, I’d washed my hands of everything I used to know.

Then came the day when a truly good friend called me to tell me my ex had a new girlfriend. I can only describe my response as relieved. It sounds odd, but I no longer had to feel guilty for not being there for him to support him in his challenging times, I didn’t have to take care of him or make sure he felt loved. Suddenly it was the new chick’s problem. And good luck to her – I’d begun to realise just what a handful the ex really was!

A few months passed, during which I noticed all my other friends strategically avoided mentioning the ex or his new girlfriend every time we’d speak. It was all a little odd and contrived in my mind. 

And then one day, one of the girls who had steadfastly refused to ever mention his name to me since I’d left for New York sent me a voice note. I pressed play as I was on the bus home, listening to her detailing the day-to-day of her own life. And yet suddenly, smack bang in the middle of this voice note, came the words, “I’m sure you’ve already heard about your ex having a baby in a couple of months, it’s so crazy.” 

My heart started racing. 

I felt sick, and panicked. Moments earlier, I’d been ravenously hungry, yet suddenly my appetite had disappeared completely and I felt pure nausea sweep over me. My palms and armpits were drenched in sweat. I stood up to lurch myself off the bus at the next stop. I couldn’t believe this news. He’d been with this new chick for less than a year, and he was having a child with her?! What about me? We’d been together for triple that time, and he’d insisted he needed at least five years before he was ready to become a dad. Even then, I had my doubts he’d be prepared to be a father. How had this happened?

Meanwhile, my friend’s voice continued to ramble on about the ins and outs of her own life. I didn’t hear a single word of it. I looked at everyone around me, oblivious to the turmoil I was experiencing. How had they not noticed my spiral of panic?!

I managed to breathe, to pull myself together and sit back down in my seat. Walking home in the rain wasn’t going to improve the situation, so I rode the rest of the way with thoughts racing around my head. 

The overwhelming emotion I realised I felt was shame. 

He’d gotten another woman pregnant so soon after we’d been building a life together. Yet here I was, still recovering from the breakup a year later, having not even had another crush since him. In the space of 15 months, he’d begun a new relationship, and now a family, and I’d simply run away and developed an avoidant attachment style and a general distrust of all men. How was that fair? And how could I ever return home and face him, or my friends, with that juxtaposition front of mind? I was embarrassed and humiliated. 

However, in the 15 minutes it took me to get off the bus and arrive home, my mindset had shifted significantly. 

Something I’d learnt over my six months of post-breakup therapy was that emotions aren’t scary or negative, they’re simply messages from you to you as to how you feel about something. And I realised, in this instance, my initial reaction hadn’t reflected my true feelings. I’d reacted in the way I thought I should feel. 

It was a shock to recognise I actually didn’t care. I didn’t care about him, about the new girlfriend (whose name I still don’t know, by the way, nor do I really want to. And no, I don’t feel the need to stalk her – crazy right!), or about their unborn child. I realised I never wanted to see or interact with him again – which was unfortunate, given I had plans to return to Australia in two months’ time, at which point I’d be living within the very same, very small suburb as him, his girlfriend and baby.

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This was a big revelation for me though, as until that moment I’d still been mourning the loss of the relationship. Suddenly, my perception of him had shifted from seeing him through rose-coloured glasses as "the one who got away", to realising that in reality, he wasn’t really a good person for me to be with, and the way he’d treated me was awful. I wouldn’t want to be the one having a baby with him, tied to him for life. 

Weirdly, the first thing everyone I reached out to wanting to discuss my thoughts about the news said was, “Wow, you dodged a bullet. That could have been you!” This annoyed me. Even if we’d stayed together, I wouldn’t have been pregnant at this point in time. He hadn’t just wanted to have a child, and found someone willing to carry it – he’d actively said he didn’t want to be a parent for years to come. So it wasn’t a case of “Who will I have this baby with?” I hadn’t dodged a bullet, I just hadn’t been enough for him to start a family with, it appeared.

Then I started wondering why... Why was he suddenly ready to be a father? Was the new girl forcing him to become one before he wanted to? Was it an accidental pregnancy, or one he had no say in? Had he seen a future with this girl before she fell pregnant? Why, when he was with me, had he said he didn’t want children for at least five more years? Was I not right for him? And how on earth was he going to be a father – he had enough of his own problems to be sorting out.

Next came the comparison, and the feelings of isolation. 

While I’d been gallivanting around the USA for 18 months, in total denial of reality, most of my best friends had been busy having babies and getting married, and now my ex would be joining them. Meanwhile, I’d never been so single in my life. 

I suddenly realised how lonely I felt. 

I began panicking about where I’d fit into my social circles once I returned home; would my ex be closer with my best friends now they all had babies to bond over? Would I be excluded, or feel unable to attend social events from now on? 

My focus shifted away from my ex, and onto the impact this news had on my place within my friendship circle, and how my friends would view me when compared to him and his new “family” once I got home. 

With a bit of time, I started to realise that sometimes, the past is better off left in the past. Though for a few nights I was plagued by dreams of having to meet the new (or not so new anymore) girlfriend, and congratulate her and my ex on their new child, I came to realise I honestly wanted nothing to do with him anymore. While I’d thought a part of me was still devastated over the breakup, I realised the sadness had never really had anything to do with missing him as a person. 

In hindsight, I could very clearly see he hadn’t been right for me. He’d made me anxious, insecure, and unsure of myself. And I’d worked hard to overcome this and heal my relationship with myself. So I may not have been heading home with a beautiful British boyfriend by my side, but arguably I was going back having solidified the strongest relationship of all: the one with myself.

When you go through a breakup, people say time heals all wounds. While you’re in the depths of the pain and suffering, drowning in sorrow and self-pity, hating yourself for not being “enough” for the person you loved, that phrase seems like a cruel form of torture. But it’s true. When you choose to stop playing the victim, feeling sorry for yourself, and instead focus on rebuilding your life and inviting in that which brings you happiness and fulfilment, it turns out you do begin to see that the people who don’t want to be in your life actually don’t deserve to be there either. 

The truth is, life moves on, regardless of whether you want it to or not. My ex moved on. And I really thought it would hurt when he did. But surprisingly, I now realise you have the choice to determine how much it affects you… And in my case, I truly couldn’t care less. 

I wish him all the best – as long as it’s far away from me and the life I’ve rebuilt for myself.

Image: Getty.

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