To not have told him?

[sarahtsq]

I was sterilised in 2020. I assumed it failed as I had a miscarriage in 2022. I thought it was a one off, til I started having weird symptoms. It was put down to IBS. I started taking the pill just in case.

met a guy in January. Told him I was sterilised. Explained it was reversible if we wanted kids in future. Didn’t go into detail as we had only just met!

2 weeks (and a sigmoidoscopy later) it confirmed to have failed. In conversation I mentioned my pill and he asked why I was on it if I was sterilised. So I explained it had failed.

he dumped me the following month, saying I’d lied by omission and it was a red flag he couldn’t come back from. (He has trust issues). He wasn’t bothered what contraception I was on, he felt I had lied to him and hidden the failure from him. Even though I was on the pill the entire time.

there’s many other issues not related to this but this was apparently the one thing I did wrong.

i don’t feel it was that wrong to not tell someone in the first 2 weeks? In my head it’s irrelevant as I’m on contraception either way, and I told him when it was confirmed. I suppose I could’ve told him sooner but why?

I’m sorry OP. He is not worth a second’s of your time.

I believe if you were sleeping with him then you should have told him the truth. If sterilised properly he was acting in the knowledge of 0% chance of pregnancy.

You knew it had failed and therefore wasn't 0% chance even with other contraception.

It is a matter of trust and you broke it.

In all truth, if I got together with a guy and first he told me her was sterile and then he revealed he needed to use contraception because actually he was fertile, and this was in the first two weeks I might think, 'Too serious a subject to dick around, I CBA'

I know you're being genuine and you HAVE been sterilised but it failed, but it does sound sus to a stranger who possibly feels he was about to be tricked into fatherhood or something?

You explained you were sterilised but you didn't explain that it had failed two years later? A miscarriage isn't a one-off, it's a clear sign that the sterilisation isn't working. I can see where he is coming from. He doesn't know what to believe anymore. If you are sleeping with someone and have this much of a complicated reproductive history you have to disclose it, otherwise you are being unfair to him. I say this as someone who had a miscarriage and then could never have children again. I have spent many a time telling men the truth of my fertility, it's only fair and right to them.

You could’ve just said you were in contraception or told him the whole story. Withholding this from someone you’re sleeping with is unusual.

You lied to him. I'm not clear how his response indicates 'trust issues'. I wouldn't trust you if you'd done that!

U can see your logic but one minute your sterilised then the next your not
I’m sorry but I’d be running for the hills

can you imagine a guy saying he’d gave a vasectomy then later saying I’ll pop a condom on as I’m not

What a prick. You only found out for sure it failed after you started seeing him? Yeah forget him. He clearly has severe issues.

You were using contraception so frankly if that's the case the sterilisation isn't even his business. It's not like most women are sterilised and it's unusual not to be?

I can’t understand why you would say to someone that you are sterilised if you knew it had failed , that is just weird so I’m not surprised he’s acted like he has

If you were having sex then yes it's very relevent and you've slept with him under false information - he consented to sex under the assumption that you had been sterilised (because that's what you told him) not it had failed

He's right. You weren't straight with him so he did the right thing.

If the roles were reversed and a man knew he had a failed vasectomy and didn't tell the female, the roof would fall in on here.

You don’t need to disclose your full medical history to someone you’ve just met, but you had reasonable doubt that the sterilisation worked when you met, enough to use contraception, I think the most straight forward way would have been to say ‘I’m on the pill’, or, if you want to go into detail, ‘I’m unsure if my sterilisation worked so I’m on the pill’. It is a bit strange if someone is sterilised one day but then on the pill the next day, it does make you sound dishonest to someone who doesn’t know you (even if you weren’t dishonest intentionally).

Me too!

If you went into enough detail to tell him you were sterilised but it could be reversed in future, then it’s by no means “too much” to tell him that it had failed.

If a guy told me he was sterilised. Then later said “but it failed” I wouldn’t trust him after that. It would be madness to do so

If you saw fit to tell him you were sterilised virtually straight out the gate, you should also have advised that you had reason to believe it had failed. Not to do so was very misleading.

Sorry, but I can see why alarm bells rang for him.

Well I think you can be pretty sure it failed after having a pregnancy.

Imagine a man saying he wasn’t sure if his vasectomy had failed but he’d got someone pregnant? Obviously it had failed in that circumstance!

Everyone knows that the pill isn’t 100%. Whenever someone posts on MN that they conceived on the pill and their partner isn’t happy about it, the consensus is that if a man really doesn’t want to be a father, then he shouldn’t rely on a contraceptive pill alone. In this case, he believed you were sterile. It may be that he always uses a condom if his partner is on the pill. You didn’t give him the opportunity to take the precautions he might have wanted to.

He sounds a useless twerp. I’d be more worried you weren’t having safe(r) sex with condoms to protect from much more than pregnancy

Have you posted this before OP as this sounds really familiar

Yes of course, sorry.

That’s exactly what I was thinking the minute I opened the thread.

A very similar one only a few weeks ago.

Both procedures can fail (years later). If the man doesn’t want the risk he uses contraception. It’s simple and not solely OPs responsibility

You’re completely in the wrong here. You should have told him the whole truth. A pregnancy after sterilisation clearly means that it wasn’t effective and you misled him. I wouldn’t trust you either.

What’s that got to do with what I said though? My point was the OP KNEW it had failed as she’d got pregnant. So why tell him she’d been sterilised when she KNEW it had failed. That’s totally different to not knowing.