Pregnancy can make you feel all sorts of things about your changing body — both good and … well, not so good. Before you know it, your belly is stretching beyond belief, your ankles are swollen to the max, and don't even get me started on the gas. Of course, all of this is completely natural, but it's hard to embrace it when you don't have the right support network around you. That's exactly how one mom-to-be felt when she recently got pregnant from a one-night stand, and told her best friend. Unfortunately, he reacted in the worst possible way, telling her that her pregnant belly was "disturbing and a little gross."
Despite having a crush on him in the past, the poster explained that her friendship with her best guy friend is purely platonic.
Still, what he said about her pregnant body cut her deeply.
On Reddit, the woman shared that the two have been friends for years and he's always told her that he only thinks of her as a sister.
"My parents treat him like a son and honestly, he's family," she wrote.
But things have changed in the last few months, after the woman learned that she was pregnant from a one-night stand.
"Being as I have PCOS I am OVER THE MOON because I was always told that the chance of me conceiving were very low," she wrote. "I am keeping this gorgeous miracle baby and I cant explain how many tears of relief I shed."
At first, her BFF was excited for her too -- but all too quickly, that changed.
"He thought it was the coolest thing ever, but then gradually dropped off the face of the planet and he never wanted to hang out anymore," she continued. "Won’t go to the gym with me, is too busy for the cinema, doesn’t feel like going to the mall, can’t come with me to visit mutual friends, nada."
Obviously, it's been hurtful for the mom-to-be to be dropped by her closest friend, so when her parents recently had the two of them over for dinner, she cornered him and demanded to know what's been going on.
"He confessed that he finds my growing baby bump disturbing and a little gross," she wrote. "He said, 'I know it’s really weird of me but it just creeps me out.'"
Needless to say, she was floored.
"I found that so demeaning and hurtful, and I burst out crying and called him an immature a–hole and told him to GTFO," she continued. "He apologized and left and I haven’t heard from him since."
Now, she's worried that the friendship is unsalvageable.
"I’m so upset that he’s ruining a lifelong friendship over my g-d baby bump!" she wrote. "I want to reach out but I just feel so … alienated from my own body and made to feel gross and I’m not sure if I’m the one that’s being difficult or if it’s him."
Some people on Reddit actually empathized with the friend. After all, they argued, she asked for the truth and he told her.
"He wasn’t being an [expletive] to you, you cornered him and forced him to confront you," one commenter wrote. "He was honest. Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to."
Another person added that although the writer wasn't wrong for being hurt, her friend was also entitled to his own feelings.
"I also don't think it's wrong of him to express how he felt," the person shared. "He clearly attempted to share your joy when he learned about it, so it's not vindictive or anything. It could be a maturity thing, but it might not be."
Meanwhile, many people thought he might suffer from an actual phobia of pregnant bellies. (Which is apparently a thing.)
"There is a legitimate phobia of pregnant women called tokophobia," one commenter explained. "I have it and it means I’m terrified of giving birth but also seeing a pregnant women’s belly can actually make me nauseous and panic. It’s in no way a judgment of things like aesthetics of your belly or stretch marks.
"It’s that the baby seems kind of like an alien feeding or like a parasite," the commenter continued. "This is not something that’s meant to be disrespectful when I say it, just explaining the phobia. Could be he has a little bit of that and didn’t really know how to process or explain his feelings. Just want you to know that pregnant women are not gross but some people can have adverse reactions to them."
But other people weren't buying the whole phobia thing. In fact, they thought there was a completely different situation going on.
"[In my opinion] this isn't about a baby bump," one person wrote. "This is about your friend realizing he's in love with you. After you got pregnant with someone else's child."
(Woah. Talk about a plot twist.)
"Yup, this is it right here," another person added. "I don't know if I'm fully bought into the 'in love' part, but I would wager the reason he is avoiding the friend is because he doesn't like the idea that she is keeping a baby from a one night stand and seeing it finally made him realize it was really real."
"My first thought was similar," someone else chimed in. "OP has always been the back-up girl in his mind, the one who'll stop him dying alone if he never finds any better options, and now she's pregnant he realizes that she's really not going to wait around for him.
"If they were as close as she says and it was purely platonic from his side he wouldn't be ghosting her, and he'd be like 'dude, I just can't get over how weird the baby belly thing is' and probably poke it or something," the commenter continued. "This whole situation reeks of unsaid plans/feelings."
Still, it sure seemed as though the OP wanted to take all the blame for the issue. Later on in the Reddit thread, she shared that she was going to apologize.
"I am suffering with extreme emotions a lot this pregnancy unfortunately (another wonderful PCOS side effect), so I am willing to agree this is all on me," she wrote. "I’ll call him as soon as I know he’s free and apologize for my crabby [expletive]."
Wow. Just wow. Here's hoping these two former besties make up (and the mom-to-be doesn't actually take ALL the blame).
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