The individual posting states that they have reached a breaking point in their relationship. The situation involves a necessary, non-emergency surgery that the poster has been waiting for, scheduled for a few months away. The poster’s husband was aware of the need for this surgery earlier in the year.
The core conflict arose because the husband refused the compromise of a vasectomy, leading to an unexpected pregnancy after months without intimacy. Upon testing positive, the husband reacted with extreme anger, accusing the poster of infidelity and demanding paternity tests for their existing children, which he said directly to the children. This sequence of events led the poster to seek an abortion and file for divorce, only for the husband to become apologetic when paternity tests confirmed he was the father, forcing the poster to confront the immediate consequences of ending the pregnancy and the marriage.
AITAH for “getting his hopes up” and then telling him i had an abortion and serving divorce papers?
As noted by relationship expert Dr. Harriet Lerner in ‘The Dance of Anger,’ ‘When we try to change someone by being angry, we usually only succeed in making the other person defensive and resistant.’ This situation demonstrates a severe breakdown in relational trust, triggered by the husband’s refusal to take responsibility for contraception, followed by an explosive reaction rooted in insecurity and projection when an unplanned pregnancy occurred.
The husband’s immediate leap to accusing his wife of infidelity and demanding paternity tests for all their children—especially stating this in front of the children—indicates deep-seated trust issues and a pattern of aggressive, defensive behavior rather than constructive communication. The wife’s reaction, while extreme (abortion and immediate divorce filing), appears to be a catastrophic response to feeling trapped, unsafe, and unsupported, especially given her underlying health concerns requiring surgery. Her action of blocking communication shows a necessary establishment of boundaries following emotional abuse.
The poster’s actions, given the husband’s demonstrated volatility and refusal to compromise on contraception, can be viewed as a necessary, albeit drastic, step toward establishing immediate physical and emotional safety for herself and her existing children. A constructive recommendation for future interactions, once the immediate separation is secure, would be to mandate all communication regarding co-parenting and the divorce proceedings occur through verified, documented channels like email, as initially implemented, to prevent further emotional manipulation or verbal abuse.
HERE’S HOW REDDIT BLEW UP AFTER HEARING THIS – PEOPLE COULDN’T BELIEVE IT.
The poster is currently in a highly conflicted emotional state, having taken drastic steps—ending a pregnancy and initiating divorce—in reaction to their husband’s extreme accusations and refusal to cooperate on family planning. The central conflict is between the poster’s need for physical safety and autonomy, which led to the abortion and separation, and the husband’s sudden shift to wanting reconciliation and expressing distress over the consequences of his prior actions.
The debate centers on whether the poster was justified in terminating the pregnancy and immediately filing for divorce given the history of the husband’s volatile behavior, or if the speed of these actions was an overreaction to the immediate stress. The central question for consideration is: Was the poster’s decision to end the pregnancy and file for divorce a necessary act of self-preservation following the husband’s dangerous accusations, or did these irreversible steps unnecessarily escalate a situation that could have been managed differently?
