I am 26 and a single mother of a two-and-a-half-year-old baby girl. I am currently in a dilemma and honestly, I do not know what to do.

I have been with my boyfriend for almost three years. He is also a single father. He is a wealthy, calm man, and throughout our relationship, he has made me feel like I am an important part of his life.

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He has introduced me to almost everyone around him or close to him. I have met his sisters, his dad, his employees, business partners, and family friends. I go to his home without any limitations, and I have never felt like he was hiding me or keeping me away from the people in his life.

There are things about him that I do not particularly like. He is very mean with hard cash, and I am also not good at asking people for money. I love someone who is a giver, so sometimes this becomes an issue for me. However, he takes me out for dinner and dates, and we celebrate special occasions together. In many ways, our relationship has been good.

Now this is where my dilemma started.

Some months ago, we were intimate. It was the first day of my safe days, so I did not take an emergency pill. Some weeks later, I was complaining of body weakness and nausea. At first, we thought it was malaria, but then it persisted. A few days later, I checked for pregnancy just to be sure. I went to the lab nearby for a scan and it turned out I am five weeks pregnant.

When I told him about the pregnancy, his reaction was not what I expected. He held his head in his hands, saying that I messed up and that we should not have done things when we had not agreed on having a child.

Since then, I have been thinking about what to do.

My best friend, who happens to be the wife of his business partner, has advised me not to terminate the pregnancy. One of his friends has also spoken to me and told me not to terminate it.

But my own mind keeps telling me something completely different.

I am seriously considering terminating the pregnancy because I do not believe he is ready for us to settle down and start living together. I do not want to become a single mother of two children with two different fathers. I already have a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, and the thought of going through everything again without knowing where this relationship is headed scares me.

The bigger issue is that I do not feel this man is ready for marriage.

We have been together for almost three years. He has introduced me to people in his life and has allowed me into his personal space, but we have never reached the point where we have seriously agreed that we are building a home together. Now that I am pregnant, instead of talking to me about what we are going to do, he says I messed up. How did I mess up? Did I do this to myself? Did I put the child there? Maybe it is partly my fault; I didn’t take the after-pill, that is true, but even then, we are both responsible for the child I am carrying.

The response “You’ve messed me up” has made me question everything.

Maybe I have been looking at the relationship differently from him. Maybe I assumed that because we had been together for this long and because he had introduced me to his family, friends, and people he works with, we were eventually heading towards marriage.

But now I am not so sure.

All of this is hard now that he is currently not even responding to my messages. I am sitting here pregnant, confused, and scared, while the man involved is barely communicating with me.

I wonder if I will regret that decision later, especially when other people are telling me to keep the baby. But will these people help me raise the child? Will they stay the nights with me, help me breastfeed, be in the delivery ward for me, pay for the child’s finances? They can promise they will, but they are men and they can lie and fail. So, I don’t know whether to trust them.

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Also, I do not want to make a decision because I am afraid. But I also do not want to bring another child into the world when I am not confident about the future of the relationship or whether the father is ready to build a family with me.

Right now, I just want to know what I should do. Should I terminate the pregnancy, leave this relationship, and move on, or am I making a decision based on fear when I should give this relationship and the pregnancy a chance?

—Agartha

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