To not have sympathy for my friend?

[lurkinglittleladybug]

I have an old school friend who’s been complaining about her partner taking zero interest in their children. She’s a stay at home mum and her partner works full time and is in a well paid job. He pays the bills and for anything her and the children need but she complains he’s not emotionally present with them. He doesn’t spend any time with them or help out at all with childcare.

I would normally have a low opinion of a man who can’t be arsed to spend time with his kids, and it is a shame for the children. But it’s so difficult to be sympathetic with my friend. I kind of feel like she made her own bed with this situation.

After a year of her being with her partner (at this point they had a really good relationship and lived together) , she knew he was strictly childfree and had no interest in children. So I was surprised when she announced her pregnancy but congratulated her as she was clearly happy about having a baby. She later told me that she knew her partner wouldn’t want to start a family so she just stopped taking the pill without telling him. He stays with her but becomes somewhat emotionally distant, I expect he was in shock. Friend was confident he would change his mind once their baby arrived.

After the baby is born he just takes zero interest, but she has lots of support from family. Nothing changes for a couple of years and then she announces she’s expecting her second child. I congratulate her, again I’m surprised, I had no idea they were trying. She then confides in me that she sabotaged the birth control again, this time the condoms they were using. At this point I make it clear I disapprove of her doing this. She becomes tearful saying what choice did she have and that her child needed a sibling. So I let the subject drop. Not wanting to be the asshole making my pregnant friend cry even though I think it’s a shitty thing to do.

Anyway now she has 2 children and she is complaining about how her partner has just emotionally checked out, not just with her children but also with her. He’s not interested in intimacy and is just going through the motions. It looks like their relationship is well and truly headed for the rocks this time.

I just find it so hard to be sympathetic with her, I mean what did she expect would happen? 🙄… Although obviously I’m very sad for the 2 children who face growing up with an emotionally distant dad…

Am I a terrible friend for not having sympathy for her?

I’m really struggling to stay friends with her knowing what I know, I just feel like I have lost respect for her. Although its difficult to end the friendship because we have known each other for such a long time.

Reversal also not available on NHS and hence very expensive (whether or not it works).

Vasectomy (unlike hysterectomy) can be reversed and fertility restored. I have also known relationships where vasectomy did not end the relationship.

Female sterilisation does not normally involve hysterectomy!

Your friend is a complete disgrace. What she did is disgusting. Zero sympathy from me either if I knew her.

That precarious financial situation is entirely her fault though. So she deserves whatever the consequences are.

Sorry if this sounds aggressive, but once again nobody seems to care about this man’s agency. I think the notion you are staying quiet “for the sake of the children” is fallacious, the staying quiet last time essentially added a whole new child into the mix. It may do so again if she manages to win him round and gets the urge again, and then how is that necessarily better for the kids who exist now?

Inaction is still an action, and she inherently made it your place when she told you. What unfolds is now regrettably partially down to how you choose to proceed. Again the buck entirely stops with your friend, by confiding in you she has put you in this position in the first place. I would actually characterise (although you may legitimately not, I’m not necessarily right here) what she’s done as a form of domestic abuse.

By robbing this man of his agency and choice, she is placing additional financial pressures and responsibilities upon him that can be stressful enough even when you embrace them. What if they proved too much and the poor man committed suicide? Would it sit well on your conscience for have stayed silent then? The children would still be down one father.

Finally to universalise the principle how would you view it if you had a son who grew up to have this done to him? Do you believe he would a right to know? Would he have the right to make decisions for his life and future based on a complete picture? How would you view those who could have said something but stayed silent?

That precarious financial situation is entirely her fault though. So she deserves whatever the consequences are.

And what about the children if the wife was made homeless? He won't have them, so the children are homeless as well?

Well forgive me you will never have come across true instances of this happening if your view is men who say it has are always misogynistic liars. You have created a completely self sustaining delusion there. Unless I have hit the jackpot and met the only human being on the planet for zero capacity for error. In which case could you tell me next weeks lottery numbers please, the cure for cancer and the secret to clean energy?

On the vasectomy point, there are still potential health ramifications albeit small ones. Which maybe a fully informed male can weight those risks vs the low risks of pregnancy where contraceptives are in use. There is a potential link between vasectomies and prostate cancer for example. Risks are evidently tiny otherwise they wouldn’t offer the procedure but does all have to be weighed up.

No the children don’t deserve any consequences. What they did deserve was to be born to two parents who wanted them. She has by her actions deprived them of that.

"Things that I have never experienced are so outside my narrow viewpoint that it's easier to pretend everybody who knows otherwise is lying than challenge my capacity to deal with new facts."

So ... your desire to punish her outweighs any consideration for her children?

Nice.

Ahh so many insults and nasty assumptions.

Of course it is possible this Op is genuine. Of course there are instances where a woman or a man has sabotaged or lied about birth control to become pregnant or get someone pregnant.

However, this is an anonymous forum that has had many instances of completely made up threads, goady threads and many, many posts of misogynistic accusations of women and mumsnet in general.

Also, the woman tricked me into fatherhood is a trope that has commonly been used as a way to justify abandoning children and blaming women.

So, it is likely that this is just another example of misogyny. Likely, not certainly. I acknowledge the possibility that this Op could be genuine. 😎

When I met my friend for coffee she almost immediately started complaining about her partner, him not taking an interest in the children, not going to the school play and the nursery nativity, about him not helping to buy their Christmas presents (just giving her the money to buy them). She was really critical of him and I just found it really hard to hear. I kept trying to change the subject but she just kept bringing it up. I felt so drained by the conversation. She was complaining about how he keeps sleeping in the guest room and barely talks to her or their children. I just struggled listening to her playing the victim and bad mouthing her partner all the time. So I just said to her ‘maybe the reason he’s struggling to bond with your children is because he didn’t want children to start with, he didn’t have a choice, you took that away when you stopped taking your pill and started sticking needles in his condoms’ she became really defensive with me. She said I was being ‘naive and stupid because women do this all the time when their men are dragging their feet about starting a family, and if we were to wait till they were ready, no women would ever have any babies’

I told her this wasn’t true and that I had never heard of anyone doing this before and that I was struggling even knowing what she had done on a moral level. She just rolled her eyes at me and told be I was talking bullshit, that her mother had always told her ‘if a woman wants a baby then she will find a way’ (her same mother who used to pressure her into giving her grandchildren before my friend had her first child). And apparently my friends sister also did this (deliberately missed some birth control pills) when her DH was dragging his feet, and that he’s been a good dad so there’s no excuse for her partner.

I just told her it was really fucked up and dysfunctional and not normal at all. She wasn’t backing down and I genuinely don’t think she sees the wrong in her actions… I said to her at this point that we were going to have to agree to disagree.

Also I found out she wasn’t sabotaging condoms by sticking pins in them but rather tracking her cycle and then retrieving their contents without her partner knowing. (Frankly Im surprised this even worked, don’t condoms contain spermicide??) So they didn’t break or anything from being poked with needles, and her partner is probably wondering how on earth she got pregnant the second time. Although I believe he does suspect what she’s done, it would explain why he became so distant with her.

I also expect the relationship will come to an end anyway. And I just hope it’s amicable and that her partner doesn’t take it out on the kids… I don’t think he will make his children homeless, I don’t think he’s actually a bad person at all to be fair.

I wish I was making this up. I wish their wasn’t two real and innocent children in the middle of this fucked up situation they have been born into…

Can you not see how you yourself are making assumptions? Pretty nasty and misandrist ones at that. I’m glad you have conceded your capacity for error though. I will be the first to acknowledge this whole scenario is thankfully not especially common, but nevertheless it has happened to me.

Well done for saying your piece OP. Will you carry on seeing her?

Shes sick

This whole scenario has been stuck in my head all day, probably for obvious reasons. Honestly that’s horrifying about the condoms. I think what I find especially triggering here is your friend has the same completely unrepentant attitude as my ex. Not only can these people commit this kind of violations, they STILL feel entitled to a high degree of care, consideration treatment from their partner.

I weighed up heavily the possibility of staying with my partner for the child’s sake, but I realised there was zero possibility for me making a relationship work with someone so essentially immoral and selfish. I rather suspect the same is true for your friend’s partner. I very much doubt this is the only arena in which these character traits of your friend manifests. I imagine his whole life is wretched and miserable because of her.

The sad thing is this whole conspiracy of silence may well have robbed this man, and also the children at a shot at a decent life. I’m not sure I’d have been all that emotionally available for my child either living with someone so toxic and entitled, but having escaped I’m now involved with a kind, intelligent and beautiful woman who loves my child. I have a shot at providing a decent family environment I wouldn’t had I stayed.

I find myself wondering if I hadn’t discovered the truth this could very well have been my life you are describing.

This has now made the Daily Mail.

I suspect friend will soon realise it's her and the friendship will be no more. Decision taken from you.

Not that's a bad thing.

Thank you @Onlypost !
I'm shocked that so few people think like you and I, like this.
Sorry this sounds all superior, but I am literally disgusted if this - the reactions of the posters - is in any way representative of the moral code of women in the UK.
It's literally abhorrent and I thank dog for cultural differences.

So, it is likely that this is just another example of misogyny. Likely, not certainly. I acknowledge the possibility that this Op could be genuine. 😎

"I don't want to earn a ban for trolling, but would love to call OP a liar."

🙄Oh dear, yet another PP who doesn't understand how legal precedents work. Or what a dystopian can of worms that could open, for all women capable of conceiving.

She said I was being ‘naive and stupid because women do this all the time when their men are dragging their feet about starting a family, and if we were to wait till they were ready, no women would ever have any babies’

As indicated by her initial deceit & selfishness, she genuinely does feel that DC are a right, not a privilege, doesn't she?

How about, when a man drags his feet clearly informs you that he does not want children, you hear his "no" the first time, & accept that it's now your responsibility to choose whether to stay childless with him, or finish the relationship & find a man who wants what you want?

Lovely smokeshield she made for herself there, with her pretence than no men want to make babies, & have to be led by women, nobly & single-sexedly preserving the species from extinction. 👀

Well done for speaking out OP, you must feel relieved at last. You will have at least trained her (may need intermittent reinforcement) to stop whinging at you, she might even distance herself from you now. If that happens, naturally she'll portray you as the villain of the piece, but at this point - do you even care?

YANBU, what she did is beyond the pale. I feel sorry for her husband.

Well forgive me you will never have come across true instances of this happening if your view is men who say it has are always misogynistic liars. You have created a completely self sustaining delusion there.

Well put @Dervel.

Also - IMustLearnToCook HAS met women who have done this, she just doesn't know it.

None of them have told her so because most wouldn't disclose anyway, & of those that do, it would be clear to them that Cook's not the best placed woman friend to confide in on the topic.