"It wasn't helpful. It didn't make me feel any better about my situation, nor did it make me feel stronger. All it did was make me feel guilty. Guilty that I had given my daughter this man as a father, guilty that I had fallen for his tricks when clearly everybody else knew he was bad news, guilty that I was bad at picking partners."
"You chose wrong. How could you pick that man to be your kid's dad? Ladies, this is why you have to be so careful about who you choose to spend your life with. Because of course it doesn't matter what he did or how he changed or what he said - it's always our fault. We were the ones who should've been looking into the crystal ball to see what the pressures of parenthood would do to his psyche."
A woman left an emotionally abusive husband two months after giving birth and received the response "I always knew he was a bad guy," which intensified her guilt. That remark made her feel responsible for giving her daughter a flawed father, for falling for manipulation, and for poor partner selection. Social reactions often default to blaming women for their partners' failures, insisting they should have predicted future behavior. Such blame assumes women must foresee emotional changes, ignores context, and compounds trauma. Well-meaning comments that assign fault can harm rather than comfort new mothers in crisis.
Read at Scary Mommy
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