S1. Ep 5 Pregnancy, Prostitutes and Property — A lot can happen in a year. | by Veritas-Surviving a Narcissist | Aug, 2025

I didn’t grow up wanting to get married or have babies. I wanted to be free, explore the world, live without responsibilities. I remember telling my grandma and she ridiculed me, asking “what else will you do with your life?!”

We often get caught up in doing what we should do as opposed to what we want, gaslighting ourselves into believing it’s what we wanted all along.

I lacked the confidence to carve my own path; I was plagued by “what ifs”. Maybe it’s the result of seeing my parents being made redundant through my childhood or moving from social housing to social housing, living in hotels when there was no other accommodation available.

Following the status quo felt safer.

My first marriage was inevitable, we’d been together several years and all of our friends were getting married. I’d found a good guy (on paper) and it made sense to settle down. It was an abusive marriage and when it ended, I felt relieved, free! I had no intentions of marrying again, I was finally going to go and see the world!

Life had other plans for me.

It was different with DH, he made me believe we could have it all — be a family and explore the world. He painted a picture of traveling the world with a baby in the backpack. His confidence and belief in me were intoxicating. I wanted to be his wife, have his child. I couldn’t think of anything better than having a mini him.

He’d convinced me that he would do all the child-related stuff, claiming that being a father was all he’d ever wanted and I could depend on him to take care of the baby and us. So, when my period was late a few months after moving in together, we weren’t scared, we were excited! A home testing kit confirmed in blocks caps that I was PREGNANT. We were going to be parents!

We decided to get married right away, why wait? Before we could share our news, I started bleeding. Scared, we rushed to the hospital, they ran some tests and told us that there was no pregnancy, the test was wrong.

Confused and deflated we went back home and I assumed we would wait to get married but DH wanted to stick with the plan, he didn’t want to wait another day. His eagerness to be my husband was so flattering, as someone who’s longed to be wanted, I pushed aside any doubts and booked a registry office for the first available slot.

DH was unemployed and my salary was modest so we had a small, simple wedding and I paid for everything from my engagement ring to his stag do, happily. As far as I was concerned, we were a partnership and that meant sharing everything. This mindset was going to bite me on the arse, hard, in the years to come…

We were married 6 weeks later and I couldn’t have been happier, I truly felt like I was marrying my best friend, my soul mate and felt a sense of belonging.

But as they say, all good things must come to an end. We were barely back from our honeymoon when DH was back to having frequent late nights out, he had found a job and he hated it, the misery was his excuse for needing to unwind with his friends.

My friend’s mum always said that men change when the marriage certificate is signed. I had experienced this with my first marriage when I was berated by my new husband, the day after the wedding, for hanging my towel “wrong”. Reminder — this was my boyfriend of four years and suddenly he didn’t like how I hung my towel….

Things got markedly worse from then.

So, DH pushing the boundaries shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but it did. Remember all the love-bombing he did in the run up to getting married? At the time, I hadn’t even heard of love-bombing, to me, it was just love. And I had transitioned from being the “cool, laid-back girlfriend” to being the “cool, laid-back wife”, I didn’t want to be seen as a nag or worse — controlling.

He had planted lots of seeds around the word “controlling” during our relationship with repeated stories about his mum controlling his dad who, to DH’s eyes, wasn’t allowed to have his own personality and was still with his mum because he was too scared to leave!

As time went on, anything I questioned became labelled as being controlling, even logical things like — do we need to buy a remote, inaccessible island because you’ve seen one for sale online?

Our phantom pregnancy had told us one thing, we were serious about having a baby, so we had some fertility tests and just before the last one, I got pregnant.

I remember it being a happy time, DH was very attentive in the early days, he proudly shared the news with his family and closest friends and wanted to be involved in all the birthing groups.

I didn’t have the easiest pregnancy, with gestational diabetes and pelvic girdle pain — my legs would literally give way after sitting down. I remember a day at work where I had to walk holding onto the sides of the wall to get to the lift — in an open plan office — with people doing their best to ignore the waddling woman groping the walls.

This wasn’t the hardest part though, my Dad was diagnosed with an incurable form of cancer during my first trimester. Our landlord had also given us notice as he was selling up, so we needed a place to live and had decided to buy a house near my parents so that I could be there to help if my Dad’s health deteriorated and they could have time with their grandchild.

It was a lot to process and I needed emotional support more than ever. DH was there for me when it suited him, the late night’s out didn’t change and when he accepted an invitation to a Vegas stag party for somebody he barely knew — the man who worked in a local coffee shop — during my 8th month of pregnancy, I finally spoke up.

I couldn’t quite believe he’d agreed to go and the fact he did it without speaking with me first really showed how little he regarded my needs. Predictably, when I voiced my reservations, it was turned around on me, I was being needy and controlling. Then came the pity party — he didn’t have many friends and had finally met someone that didn’t work at a strip club and he felt so happy to be invited along, was I really going to take that away from him?

The emotional manipulation was on point!

I felt like the unsupportive parent!

So he went, and I felt scared and lonely but kept myself as busy as I could with my “peg leg” because by then my leg was giving way all the time.

Two nights into the trip, DH called me, seemingly upset. He claimed that the groom and his friends were only interested in sleeping with prostitutes and that’s not what he was there for. He claimed to feel disgusted, so much so that he was looking at flights to fly back early! If you’ve picked up on how foolishly, blindly, trusting I am, you’ll know that I believed him. In fact, I felt bad for him.

The next day, I noticed £thousands had been withdrawn in Las Vegas, from our bank account. DH was in a much happier mood, he said they went to a new club and booked a table, drinks were expensive so he’d needed to take more out, he knew it was a lot (especially since we were saving for a house), but he didn’t want to let the boys down.

You know what? I believed him. As I write this, I wish I could go back in time and smack myself on my head! If that money was for drinks, why didn’t he pay with his card?

I have a high threshold for bullshit and as we move onto the next chapter in our lives — the baby years, you will see how high.