It sounds like she wanted to escape not you, but parenthood, says Philippa Perry
The dilemma I’m in my mid-30s and was in a relationship for 10 years with someone I love very deeply and thought I’d grow old with. We recently started to have medically assisted IUI with donor sperm (we’re lesbians) and then my partner left me two days before our first insemination. I found out she’d been having an affair with a mutual friend. She came back for a while, and we had a lot of love and intimacy, yet she then left again.
I’d been going to our clinic for three weeks, and I feel so sad and as though I can’t let go of what I thought was going to be our baby. It also doesn’t feel as if there’s any language for this as fertility treatment for lesbians is not really in society “speak”, so I’m struggling to even name what’s happened to me.
