I’m pregnant with me and my husband’s first baby – not long to go now. I’m apprehensive, terrified and excited for the new challenge it will bring to our family.

I am struggling with anxiety about being a good parent, whether I’ll cope, if I can do it. I’m afraid of failing – the unknown, how our lives will change. I’m afraid of not bonding with the baby. These feelings make me sad. I’ve spoken to my husband about them.

I think being pregnant has brought up a lot of feelings about my own childhood. Whilst I remember feeling loved as a child, my childhood was unsettled. My dad wasn’t present – at least not emotionally. He was unreliable in terms of providing for the family, so my mum had to spend all of her time working to ensure we had what we needed. As a result, she wasn’t around much when we were growing up and my dad was inconsistent with his attention. We did what he wanted to do, which was generally adult focused activities like waiting at his work until he’d finished, tagging along to his amateur football matches or going to the pub. He stayed in bed late at weekends. Most significantly, he had affairs, and I remember multiple occasions when I witnessed him being with other women. This caused us to move away from our stable home surrounded by grandparents, and we moved house many more times thereafter. My parents stayed together until I was a teenager and they eventually got a divorce. My mum told me about the infidelities when I was older; I’ve never spoken to my dad about it. My mum kept so much from us when we were growing up, but as I got older I sensed things were going on at the time. I’m very close to my mum, but have a inconsistent relationship with my dad.

I’ve recently started therapy, and this has brought up issues with self-esteem, people pleasing and setting poor boundaries, which seems to have stemmed from childhood experiences.

Moving on to my relationship with my husband. We’ve been together for 13 years, married for 2. We got together young and spent university together. We were infatuated with each other – perhaps me more so than him. We spent all of our time together. It was tumultuous – we argued frequently about goodness knows what now, and had rather poor communication. I remember he broke up with me during that time, it was all very dramatic but we were back together by the end of the day.

When we left university, things changed significantly. We were living apart and saw each other infrequently, maybe twice a month. He got a full time job whilst I continued studying. His job introduced him to a large group of people of similar age, and he spent a lot of time going out. We wanted different things – I wanted to settle down, he wasn’t ready. He didn’t want to rent, only wanted to buy a property, which was a long way off. I just wanted to live together however that looked.

He unexpectedly ended things with me about a year after we left university and immediately started seeing another girl – but didn’t tell me this bit. I say it was unexpected – it felt that way but things weren’t normal for a while. As we were long distance, he did this over the phone. I was heartbroken. My memory is hazy over this time, but I was coming towards the end of my studying and this kept me busy. I wanted a clean break, he wanted to be friends. I was really quick to ‘fill the void’ with someone else – I remember telling people I’d go on dating apps to make myself feel more attractive. I started talking to people and went on a few dates, got close to one person in particular. Looking back with hindsight, I know I was doing this for attention under the weight of poor self esteem. It was a terribly short lived relationship really, and I was always crying and talking about my ex.

After a few months, my now husband called me and told me he wanted to get back together, he’d made a terrible mistake. He told me about the girl he’d been seeing. We agreed to meet to talk. Long story short, we got back together.

Nothing really changed in the next few years. He still didn’t want to move in together and didn’t like talking about the future, whereas it’s all I wanted to do. His goal at the time was to get on the property ladder, but this wasn’t as important to me. He looked at buying a flat on his own, which was also very upsetting – all I wanted to was live together. We were living long distance still. I got on with starting a career. We were living separate lives.

Since getting back together, I started seeking male attention to validate myself and make myself feel good. This never escalated in to anything, just made me feel better about myself. I wasn’t like this before we broke up.

I started working in hospitality to make a bit of money whilst studying – everyone that worked there was young and it was so much fun. They became my main friendship group. We all spent time together outside of work, mainly drinking alcohol and going out. There was a younger employee who I knew had a crush on me, and I welcomed the attention. We got on well and had a laugh together, and flirted with each other. One night, when I was very drunk, we kissed. The next day, for a split second I wondered if this person could give me the life I wanted – living together, settling down, security. This was short lived and realised that my now husband was who I wanted to be with. I loved him so much, and we’d been through so much together. I felt awful for the betrayal, deservedly.

I reinforced to the other person that this was a mistake and wouldn’t happen again.

I regrettably chose not to tell my partner at the time. I did this because I didn’t feel secure in what we had and felt this would destroy what we’d built back up. I wanted to fully make a go of it with him, and didn’t feel that this piece of information would help. I knew nothing more would happen. Equally, I wasn’t ready to give up spending time with the friends I had made and so greatly enjoyed spending time with. Genuinely this group were the only friends I had that lived near me.

Skip forward a few years – we bought a flat together, got engaged. I kept seeing the group of friends, including the other person, but nothing further happened.

It was when we got engaged that I felt fully secure in our relationship, fully committed to. Seeking male validation stopped.

Our relationship has gone from strength to strength since we got engaged. We have both matured, begun to share the same values and have a genuinely emotionally secure relationship.  We are each other’s rocks. I have never been happier, and I love our life together. However, my self esteem issues and fear of abandonment continue. When we got married, we both took this commitment very seriously, and rightly so. Afterwards, I was wracked with guilt about the incident of (then) 5 years ago (now 7 years ago). My husband asked me one day if I’d ever cheated on him – we were talking about another couple’s incidence of this. So I told him about the drunken night. He was very shocked and couldn’t believe it.

In the moment, I decided to tell him that I didn’t know the person it happened with, that it was a stranger. I believe I did this for the following reasons. I didn’t want him to try to understand my reasoning for continuing to see this person (in a group) after it happened. Although nothing more happened, I didn’t want him to go through the thoughts that it might have, or unfairly put him through those thoughts. I also feel that I was extremely ashamed of my behaviour, as this behaviour came from an ‘old version’ of me, and was in no way reflective of our current relationship.

My husband forgave me for this incident, reflected that we’d overcome so much together, and were in a different place then after the break up, and asked that we draw a line underneath it. He was upset that I didn’t tell him more than the incident itself. I still can’t believe I did something like that when I think of our relationship now.

I suspect the pregnancy has now brought up all those feelings of guilt to the surface – about not telling him the full truth. I’m really trying to work on myself and address my long standing issues regarding self esteem and fear of abandonment. I have done so much self reflection that I know I would not act in the same way again. I fear that telling him now will dredge all the old feelings up for no reason. He would wonder why I was bringing it back up at all – was there more to the story at the time? Did something else happen? It feels like a catch 22 situation. For clarity – I don’t see these friends anymore. I have not and will never lie to my husband again.

I don’t want to hurt the person that I love most in the world, and we are starting a family. I feel horrible everyday, and unworthy of him.

With my therapist, I have talked about self sabotaging behaviour. As the stakes get higher (marriage, pregnancy) I do my best to sabotage what I have so that I don’t get hurt (abandoned). I also have a great sense of feeling unworthy of love and that I don’t deserve happiness. I have perfectionist traits, and hold myself to incredibly high standards – I’m very unforgiving to myself, and struggle to recognise my own human fallibility. We are also exploring me having OCD tendencies.

Not sure what I’m hoping for here, just wanted to gain a bit of perspective. I’m working towards living my values, but am beating myself up so much that it’s hard to give myself any grace at the moment. I’m so committed to improving myself and growing as a person. This long post is in no way an excuse for my behaviour, I just truly believe that there are explanations for how we act.