First of all, this is not a generalization of all men. I have known plenty of men who show a lot of excitement about their wife’s pregnancy. But I have also talked to a lot of women who expressed frustration over their husband’s seeming lack of enthusiasm over the pregnancy. They may be happy, but they are just not as excited as the woman expects them to be, which of course gets the wheels turning in her head and pretty soon she’s convinced he doesn’t really want to be a dad yet. Then the drama begins.
Sometimes, there are real situations where the husband is indeed not excited about the pregnancy. There may be a variety of reasons for this, including the couple’s finances or the timing of the pregnancy. It could also have to do with how many children the couple has already. Let’s assume for the sake of this blog, however, that the husband is actually happy about the pregnancy and it’s his response that the wife has a problem with. The problem has nothing to do with how he feels about the pregnancy; it has everything to do with a wrong perception of how guys handle anything that is impending.
A lot of guys I know really live in the present, and this includes my husband. It used to be really hard for me to understand, but over the years I have come to grasp his way of thinking about the events in his life. It’s not complicated; it’s actually very simple. He does not dwell on things that are going to happen; he focuses on what is happening right now. Pregnancy is a very “right now” thing for women for obvious reasons. But for men, it’s a “going to happen” thing. Excitement, by definition, is all about celebration or anticipation of celebration. So guys like mine will get pretty excited about things that are happening to them right now (like a new big purchase or a touchdown), but they don’t get as excited about things that are going to happen in the future. I just didn’t get it at the time, but my husband did not show much excitement about our wedding until the morning of the big day, then he was beside himself! He did not show much excitement about our pregnancy until he could feel our son kick, which was in the third trimester for the most part. He got really excited once our son was born.
If you are pregnant and your husband doesn’t seem very excited, talk to him about it. Maybe it has nothing to do with his feelings about having a child. Maybe it’s just not “right now” enough for him. Give it time and create opportunities for him to really participate in the pregnancy so it feels like it is happening to him, too, and not just you.
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