When I first noticed it, I told myself not to overreact. After all, people glance. It’s human nature, isn’t it? That’s what I had always been told—that a wandering eye doesn’t mean anything, that it’s harmless. But over time, the glances weren’t just quick, passing flickers. They lingered. His eyes didn’t just move across a crowded room; they stopped, settled, absorbed. And when I stood there, pregnant, heavier than I once was, swollen in body and fragile in spirit, I could feel every second of his attention landing on someone else.
At first, I tried to swallow it down. I told myself I was being hormonal, that my insecurities were amplified by the changes in my body. But the truth is, pregnancy didn’t steal my ability to see reality. My eyes were clear, and they told me one undeniable fact: his gaze was too often fixed where it didn’t belong. And every time it happened, it felt like a tiny betrayal, a cut that wasn’t deep enough to bleed, but sharp enough to ache.
One evening, I couldn’t hold it in any longer. We were out together, sitting side by side, and I caught him staring—again. The weight of it pressed against my chest, and the words came out before I could stop them. “Do you realize how much you stare at other women when I’m right here?”
His response wasn’t what I had hoped for. He didn’t look embarrassed, or even guilty. Instead, he smirked, shrugged, and twisted the situation until I was the problem. He told me I was imagining things. He told me I was insecure, hormonal, making mountains out of nothing. He said every man looks, that it’s natural, and that I was being dramatic. And with every word, I felt my reality being stolen from me, replaced with the suggestion that I was crazy.
Gaslighting—that’s the word people use. And in that moment, I finally understood how dangerous it is. Because when someone you love tells you that what you saw with your own eyes isn’t real, it makes you question yourself in the cruelest way. I wanted to believe him, I wanted to trust his words more than I trusted my own instincts. But deep down, a stubborn truth pulsed in me: I knew what I saw. And I knew how it made me feel.
It wasn’t about the women he looked at. It wasn’t about their beauty, their curves, their youth. It was about me, sitting right there, carrying his child, aching in ways he could never fully understand, and feeling invisible in his presence. It was about respect—or rather, the lack of it. If all men look, then fine, let them look. But a man who loves his woman should know when to turn his gaze back, when to remember who is sitting beside him, when to protect her heart instead of piercing it.
That night, I cried alone. Not loud, messy sobs, but quiet tears that slipped silently down my face while he slept peacefully next to me. The kind of tears that come from a place of exhaustion rather than rage. Because it wasn’t just about his eyes anymore—it was about the way he tried to make me doubt myself, the way he brushed off my pain like it was inconvenient noise.
As the days passed, I realized something. I could no longer excuse it as “just looking.” It had become a wound in our relationship, one he refused to acknowledge. And maybe, just maybe, the bigger wound was the way he made me feel like a stranger to my own emotions. He wanted me to believe I was crazy, when all I was asking for was respect.
And so I decided: I would no longer apologize for what I saw. I would no longer shrink myself into silence to keep him comfortable. I was carrying life inside me, and with it, a new strength I hadn’t known before. My self-confidence might be bruised, but my vision was clear. And if he couldn’t see me—truly see me—then one day, I would have to decide whether his presence was worth my invisibility.
Because I may be pregnant, insecure at times, unsure of my body’s changes—but I am not blind. And I deserve a love that looks back at me, even when the whole world walks by.