Was this emotional manipulation?

When I met my ex three years ago, he appeared to be in need of a good friend and love. I have a big heart and I love being able to help and love people any way that I can...at least I used to. When we first started dating he informed me that he had recently committed to practicing abstinence. I wasn't, but I was ok with that because a healthy and successful relationship was what mattered to me and I was will to abstain with him. He also had low self-esteem as a result of being verbally abused by his family. After some time he explained that he wanted us to become intimate. At first I was against it, but he was adamant about it which I found odd and after rejecting him a couple of times, we became abstinent.

After a year of dating, he tells me that he had no feelings for me which totally threw me off because there were no signs. He said that he's been hurt too many times and everytime someone says that they love him they hurt him so he hadn't allowed himself to get close to me. Well I found out a week later that I was 5 weeks pregnant. He was horrible to me when I broke the news and wanted me to get an abortion. I refused and told him that I had no problem raising the baby alone. He said he'd be in the child's life, but he was pretty much ghost during my pregnancy. At 18 weeks I found out I was about to lose the baby and had to have a surgery to save her. He never showed at the hospital using the excuse he had to work nor did he check on me the next day. The remaining 18 weeks of my pregnancy were spent under the care of my family and the only time he reached out to me was when he tried to get me to have sex, wanted some company, or needed money which I declined each time. Sex was a definite no as it would put the baby in jeopardy post surgery.

Weeks before the birth of our daughter, he started coming around and was excited about the baby. He was there for the entire labor and seemed so happy about the birth of our daughter. I later found out he'd spent most of my time in labor on a dating site. Although we hadn't been together since him breaking the news of not having feelings for me, being on a dating site during my labor should have been the last thing on his mind. His family has speny years calling him stupid and other horrible things. His mother treats him like a surrogate husband and she's always borrowing money from him. He'll give her his last dime including compromising his rent to give her money and will complain to me about her asking him for it when he has two other siblings that make more money than he does. He said he feels obligated to give it because of the sacrifices she made as a single parent. She will get mad at him when he does things and curse him out and call him horrible things.

With this said, I was shocked at how crappy he treated me after I came home from the hospital. His family was now giving him respect with his new role as a father and the person that has always been loyal and loving no matter what, was being treated like crap. It hurt. Now he's defending his family to me like they are the cream of the crop and trying to make me feel bad for having an opinion about them based off of the abuse he said he endured from them. He also doesn't feel like he owes me an apology for not being at the hospital when I had the surgery to save our daughter from miscarrying. He said that I'd eat my words for calling him selfish during that time because he said he prayed for her and would cry some days. Actions speak louder than words and he NEVER asked about her post surgery or accepted an invite to a doctors appointment. He's been overly nice lately, but he's also experiencing some problems and he knows I'm not willing to help. I don't trust people who go from being evil towards me to being nice.

I also feel like he uses our daughter for attention because when he comes to visit, he puts her to sleep and either watches my cable (he has none at his apt) or is messing around on his cellphone. She now screams hysterically when he comes over and doesn't like being in his arms. He's the only one she does like that. With all of this said, could his wanting me to feel bad for him because of the "abuse" he received, his "abstaining from sex," his claim that he was worried and praying for our daughter, and not holding himself accountable for not supporting at my surgery characteristics of an emotional manipulator?

Hiya..

I'm not sure about him being emotionally manipulative because there isn't enough information in your post for me to say yes..

However; I am seeing an awful lot of signs that point towards him being completely emotionally unavailable to you..
I'm inclined to say that his wish to be abstinent at the beginning of your relationship was because he wasn't feeling able to allow himself to become close in that way to you but then when he started feeling more comfortable with you, he decided that intimacy was a step that he'd like to make with you.

But.. it was a kind of detached sexual intimacy that seems to have been more centred around his desire for sex than emotional intimacy.. he showed this to you by refusing to go into this on an equal level to you.. he didn't want to wait until you were 100% comfy with things but rather decided that he was going to control the pace of when and where and how.

I'm really really sorry for the way he acted when you were in hospital with your daughters life at risk.. that should never have happened..
I feel really strongly that he really isn't able to care for you in the way that you need him to be in this relationship.. him not going to the hospital was absolutely selfish of him and if he had cared about you as much as a partner should do then he would have been there to support you.
But, he says this himself as well..

So.. I can't say that this is emotional manipulation but I can say that this man sounds very selfish, very unable to meet your needs and completely unable to consider or even understand that you have valid thoughts and feelings of your own that are just as important as his own.

I do feel some sympathy for him here though.. being abused is awful and he's still caught up in the whirlpool of emotionally detaching so that he can stay connected to his family.. the question here though is; is this man able to heal through therapy or is he too emotionally stunted to become what you need him to be..?

xx