To ask if you know anyone personally who got pregnant by lying about contraception?

[Pavemw]

Just that, really. I have an extremely close friend who confided in me at new year that her 11 year old dd wasn’t actually an accident. I have known her half my life and our kids are friends. She was with this man for a short time and the relationship did not last the pregnancy although he does see his dd and has been pretty good to my friend financially.

I can’t get my head around it. This is someone who I go to for advice. She’s always empathetic and kind. I can’t even believe she would have done it and I don’t know why it’s bothering me as much as it is. I don’t know her ex, haven’t seen him in many years. I almost feel she’s lied to me too, which I know is silly. She said she was late 30s, had been told her fertility wasn’t great and had had enough of being messed around by men, so when this next one seemed keen to commit she just went for it. I know she has been treated badly in the past and has always put her heart out there only to be messed about or strung along so I can almost feel how frustrated she would have been but… to do this? I can’t imagine it as I had my two in a happy marriage. Maybe I being horribly judgmental. I can’t reconcile this with who I thought she was all these years. Am I being dramatic?!

I'm one of three. My sister is the youngest and a few years back I asked my parents if they always planned to have three. Simultaneously my mum said yes and my dad said no 😂. My dad then slowly looked at my mum in shock and said, well no but "you said it'd be ok". My mum said "well I always wanted more" 🤷‍♀️. I guess that's why my dad got the snip, but he seemed genuinely surprised my mum had actually planned it 30 years later!

Not at all. But if a man desperately doesn’t want a baby he should do something about it

I agree that for some women the biological urge is so strong it trumps their moral compass.

I’m pretty sure my SIL did this, baby #3 was apparently a huge surprise… that came after months of her pining for one last baby in her late 30s. What a coincidence!

I absolutely fucking judge women who trick men into having a baby - I’m horrified that you think it’s ok 🤬😳😬

What, like trust his wife? 🙄

My former neighbour did this. She told me she was ready to have a child but her partner at the time wasn't. She said she wasn't going to waste any more time. A couple of months later she was pregnant and she told me she deliberately stopped taking the pill without telling him.
He wasn't happy at all about the pregnancy but once his child was born he doted on her.
Then they got married because they wanted to rent a particular flat (I live in a country where some flats with a particular type of government support are only available to married couples).
Shortly after that she decided she didn't want to be with him anymore so divorced him and kicked him out of the rented flat. And about a year after that she decided she was moving back to the country she was from. He didn't want to be separated from his daughter but he agreed to her moving back with the child. And now he never sees his daughter at all.

I think the whole thing was absolutely disgraceful. She was ruthless from start to finish.

I have a few religious friends who don’t use any contraceptives, but do use a fertility tracking app. Their husbands know this and share their religious beliefs. 3 of the husbands have been really, really angry (e.g. left the house over night because they were too angry to share a house) when an “unplanned” pregnancy happened. For one couple it was dc2, and the other 2 it was dc3.

Let's face it this will happen far, far more than we'll ever know. Most women wouldn't confess and whilst I don't know anyone who's admitted to having an 'accident' I did know someone who said she planned on accidently on purpose not taking her pill because her husband had vetoed baby number 4. No idea if she went through with it or not as we lost contact.

Women hold most the cards when it comes to contraception, my advice to any man would be to use condoms to protect themselves and ship themselves off for a vasectomy when their family is complete. Stop letting someone else play with your life basically.

If having a child was going to destroy him there were options available such as a vasectomy

My niece (we don't talk now) but she was on the implant and had it removed, she was seeing a young man who came from a wealthy family and didn't tell him. She told my brother after she became pregnant and had said many times before she met him that her plan was "to get pregnant to a wealthy man asquicklyas possible".

My neice and my brother are no longer talking either. My nice and my great neices father are not together.

Seeing as I need to spoon feed @JHound here is your post affirming the belief that “women do [give their child up without a second thought] every day”.

What else would you possible mean by “women do every day”?

Or use a condom. Not because he doesn’t trust his wife but because double the protection makes it half as likely to conceive the child he doesn’t want

Yes she used to spit the pill out after he stood over her watching her take it every morning he refused to wear condoms and knew she was trying to get pregnant really not sure why he was shocked she got pregnant though I'm pretty sure they are still together thirty years later he has cheated on her at various times but they have three children and have stayed together 🤷‍♀️

I knew someone who did this.
I didn't hang around for long. I thought if you could lie like that to someone who you were engaged to, and keep up that lie for the rest of your life, you'd lie to me for something much, much smaller and that didn't feel like a friendship I wanted.

If I have sex with a man on the express belief he was single, but he lied and it turns out he was married then no - I would not considered myself to have fully consented to sex.

wow that’s a hot take. So do you think partnered men who lie should be prosecuted for rape??

This is very wrong. My DC was an accident in the sense that I wasn't trying to get pregnant, but I was using condoms with long term (10+ years) partner. Contraception failure - we were drunk and probably applied it wrong - and we kept DC. I don't think this is wildly unusual, I'm surely not the only woman to get pregnant while a bit drunk and messing up contraception? It's not fair to assume that any unplanned pregnancy is a due to a woman lying.

Genuinely what planet do you live on? Awful view to have.

I know someone who was determined to have a third child, her husband was dead against it, as one of the existing 2 children has a disability. He was actually waiting for a vasectomy appointment when she 'forgot' to take her pill. Third child was also born with the disability, and the marriage did not survive.

I felt sorry for all concerned tbh, I understand her wish to have another child, but also think she was very wrong to go ahead without her husband's consent or knowledge.

@Pandasnacks

In what way does this mean she’s not down to earth? She had no obligation to ever tell you this detail, it’s absolutely none of your business and nothing to do with your friendship,
Of course it affects how the OP sees her.

If you found out your long time friend committed fraud or armed robbery or some other morally corrupt action would it not shock you and make you question many things

That this woman so underhandedly deceived someone in the biggest way tells you a LOT about them. That would make me stop and think

If I were a man and really didn’t want a child, I would have a vasectomy or use condoms. The pill is never 100% safe.

I don’t encourage people to lie to get pregnant either. But if it’s going to ‘destroy’ my life to have a baby, I’m taking measures to ensure it won’t happen.

No child should be made without both parents consent. Theres always talk of a male contraceptive coming out which is a good thing but I would never trust anyone else with my contraception. If I were a bloke I’d still use a condom if I didn’t want any kids.

I am live and let live type of a person - so many things other people do that l don't agree with but who cares what little old me thinks?!

The thing is, l will never really know if she did it deliberately or not, just a hunch l have so me getting worked up about it is pointless.

I think it probably happens a lot more than anyone realises - actually l know someone who definitely did this, the dad wasn't actively against having children but weren't something he had planned that early in their relationship, if at all - 3 kids later and he adores them all but what a massive risk - not sonething l would do.

Same! People can be good, but exhibit poor behaviour from time to time. It doesn’t make them bad people.

I’ve got mates who have had affairs, stolen things, taken drugs/low level drug dealing… I don’t judge most people. He without sin and all that. If people perpetually making morally ambiguous choices and it affects me that’s different, but we all make mistakes and make poor choices, for all sorts of different motivations sometimes.

Carefully considered, intentional conception seems to be very much a rarity!

Almost everyone I know or hear of is either:

'Accidental' i.e. lazy, drunk, passive, half-hearted - can't be arsed getting the condoms, don't like the way they feel, don't want to insist, sort of want to get pregnant, oops did my pill fail, not bright enough to think through the consequences, blindly repeating damaging patterns.

or

Some form of coercive contraceptive fraud - more often by women trying to tie down their man, in my experience. Inevitably doomed to fail, albeit sometimes after a miserable relationship, and leaving children with absent or distant or hostile co-parents.

The only people I know who made a thoughtful deliberate choice to become parents are friends of friends who adopted after IVF failed. Everyone else is some form of 'accident' (multiple times over, just how incompetent with contraception are they?) or manipulation or coercion (to trap a partner or keep a failing relationship going). Eventually retconned to fairytale, ofc!

How would you feel if it was a man who slipped off a condom during sex?