Did Having a Baby Make You Start Thinking About Your Ex?
I wasn’t thinking about much when my daughter was three months old. My maternity leave was over, and I was back at work – albeit at a reduced thirty-hour schedule. I didn’t have time to think about sex, nonetheless an ex.
Turns out some parents have turned the seven-year itch into the three-month itch. Their baby hits three months, and as exhausted and un-sexy as the mothers feel, they start thinking about what their life could have been if they took a different path. Namely, if they picked another partner.
In the New York Times this week, essayist Anna Solomon says she couldn’t help romanticizing her exes when her daughter was still a newborn, when she hit that three-month mark everyone told her would be a turning point, when she would start to get her life back:
“I was certain that I
When I read this in the NYTimes, all I could think was, “What the hell?” I have a 9 week old and a 2 year old right now and I’m more grateful and in love with my husband than ever. If I’ve thought of my ex at all, it’s to think, “Thank God I didn’t have any kids with HIM!” *shudder*
You got it ChiLaura – Anne, I was trying to point out that you can just be “pretty darn OK” without being all rah-rah-sis-boom-bah about it.
Anne, I read the “if not” to mean “even if you’re not actually wondrously in love with where you are”, i.e. you don’t need to be all 1950s about it, but just realize that you’re okay. But I see what you mean. I wonder what the author meant?
Maeby, that’s too funny! I know how you feel.
i day dream about anyone who gives me the time of day. my realtor, my neighbor, the mail man (thank god there arent milkmen anymore!). It’s not really in a sexual way, i just feel lonely staying with kids all day! I just wonder what life would be like without all these kids
“Your baby grows, you get some sleep, and you realize you are pretty darn OK where you are – if not completely and wonderously in love with where you are. ”
Why the need for this tidy, saccharine 1950s rejoinder? Why can’t it just be left with the notion that “it’s fleeting.” Women have the ability to be adults and accept the consequences of our choices, ie, we don’t need to be “wondrously in love with where [we] are” to get through escapist fantasies and back to functioning in reality. To use “wondrously in love with where [we] are” as a marker of reality seems, well, unrealistic.
I’m like some others here. I think I just like to think about a relatively stress free time in my life and the person I was then.
I used to do that all the time, but for me it was my high school boyfriend. I still talk to him sometimes, and occasionally i would wish i were still with him, instead of my fiance. I know that I love my fiance, but with all the stress it just gets lost sometimes, and you cant help but think back to those times when things were just so much easier.
I plead the fifth! Kidding. Don’t we all wonder from time to time? Normal..I think!
I am glad to see I’m not alone in day dreaming about my ex. It’s strange, because one of the reasons I broke up with him was that I didn’t think he’d make a great father. My husband is a great father! I just miss how I felt about myself when I was with him, the freedom I had, all of the romantic things about my past relationship. I miss my ex a lot some days. But I know I would be miserable if I had married him, so it’s easy to bring myself back to reality pretty quickly.
I dream about my college boyfriend all the time now that I have a toddler. Like feener, I’m sure that what my subconscious yearns for is the days when my time was entirely my own and my life was pretty much trouble-free. I don’t miss *him*, but I miss the freedom I once enjoyed.
Ha! It’s pretty true.
I had the unplanned pregnancy from hell that put a big strain on my marriage, and I started thinking about the guy I had a thing for when I started dating my now-husband. I had liked him a bit more than my husband, but my husband asked me out first, and the other guy didn’t seem interested to me. I found out while I was pregnant that he did like me, and had threatened my husband for asking me out first! I started imagining how much more sympathetic and kind he would be. Then I remembered that he was really aggressive and kind of an ass, and that’s why I didn’t think twice about going steady with the huz.
i think it also has to do with the fact that most ex’s were from days when you had little to NO responsiblity. I had a college ex that maybe i have thought about….and i think it is more about the fact that the relationship never had to go through REAL life stuff, we just drank, and had fun.