Opinion: Why You Should Cut Selfish Infants out of Your Life

We all know self-absorbed people. These one-sided relationships wear us down and deplete our resources. It is a person’s actions, not age, that should determine whether it is time to let go of that relationship. For these reasons, I removed my selfish infant from my life.

Some people may say I’m committing child neglect, but isn’t the greater crime to neglect oneself? After weeks with my child, I stopped sleeping and doing the things I loved like going to heavy metal shows, tripping on acid, and binging porn for twelve hours. I lost myself in my love for my child. My friends didn’t even recognize who I was anymore. Something had to change.

I tried to work on our relationship, but I quickly realized the problem was with my newborn. He was constantly taking. He woke me up at all hours of the night just to tell me about a poop he had. He used me for transportation and food, and even though I was always there to comfort him, he never once asked how I was feeling. He pulled my hair, fecally destroyed all the new clothes I bought him, and stole the milk right out of my ducts. No matter how I much I tried to talk to him, I realized he had no respect for my boundaries.

You can’t control your three-week infant’s actions, but you can control your response. If you allow them to walk (metaphorically) and spit up (literally) all over you, what example are you setting?

My happiness has increased greatly since removing the infant from my life. Lately I’ve been spending time with family and friends who can burp themselves, pay for their own meals, and wipe off their own sticky snot faces. With distance, I realized that I had let my child’s superficial positive qualities (being cute, the occasional passing gas smile, physical similarities to me) convince me our relationship was worth his overwhelming codependency on me.

Let me be clear: I’m not against being a parent. I believe it has the potential to be a positive experience with the right child. And despite all my setbacks with my first child, I’m happy to announce I’m pregnant again. Maybe this one won’t be such a fucking asshole.