Summary:

Story from Childfree. His wife suddenly wants him to get his vasectomy reversed. I wonder why. He's willing to stay with her.

Original.

Update.


Body:

6 years ago, I met the most amazing woman I've never known. Let's call her Claire.

She was adventurous, intelligent, and incredibly talented (she's a violinist). We've been together since we met and married one year. 5 years and 10 months of that time has been absolutely blissful.

Even after marriage, he's put this woman on a pedestal. I can easily imagine loving a woman so much that you want to spend your entire life with her, but I could never imagine seeing someone like that. I'm always astonished by the objective tone (Ie. "She is incredible" as oppose to "I think she's incredible"). The tone implies that they literally cannot see the woman another way.

Since she stopped playing, she's become very depressed (and this isn't a self diagnosis - she goes to a therapist weekly now and she's on antidepressants). There were whole days when she was at her lowest when she didn't leave the house. She's told me that she feels like she doesn't have purpose anymore, and I hate that. Then, after she started the antidepressants, she decided that her calling in life was to raise children.

I hate kids, but if I honestly thought it would help her, I would become a dad.

Jesus Christ.

This is extraordinary supplication. Anybody with half a brain knows that a father who doesn't want to be a father and an alcoholic depressed mom will not be an effective parenting couple. This is not logic. This is a man who wants to move heaven and Earth to please someone who he's put on an impossible pedestal.

We've both been CF since we met. After our wedding, we got all the "when are the kids coming bingos", and she hated them more than I did. Now she's totally changed her mind, and has told me that it's really important to her that I have my vasectomy reversed. She's brought it up once or twice every day for the past week.

Well that's sudden...

After basically everyone both here and on [r]relationships said "go to couples therapy", we started going to couples therapy every other day,

Over the past week, I really thought that things were getting better. I felt hope, for this first time in weeks. We had talked through a lot of the things that had been depressing Claire and finding ways to work through them together.

Here's a thing I left out of the initial post because it was embarrassing to me. Claire has been drinking since her diagnosis. A lot. Not like "I never see her sober" a lot, but more than a person should drink a lot.

Fast forward to this morning. It was an emotional session the whole way through. It didn't help that last weekend was a concert from her former orchestra - we started off on that, and Claire broke down about it pretty quickly. We talked about that for a while, then some other things that I don't even really remember because I'm so fucking angry right now, then Claire brought up that she needed kids to be happy. Again. Fucking again.

He is reluctant to violate his inner image of her, by describing her alcoholism.

Again, look at the language of this post. He leads with justifications for her behavior. He says "Things depress her." He doesn't say that "She lets things get her down" or "She can't handle things" or anything else that gives his wife agency for her behavior. She is not an actor; she is acted upon.

When he finally does it, it's wrapped up in excuses. It's just a link in the causal chain that begun by the "things" that act upon her and the stress of her concert. A Red Pill Man would have written: "My wife couldn't handle things, and resorted to alcoholism." See the difference in how you'd have to see yourself and your wife, to describe her that way?

Long story short, this turns into a giant fight between Claire and I, refereed by our therapist, which culminated in her tearfully telling me that she's pregnant. One day, while I was at work, trying to fucking provide for her, she fucked some dude and got herself knocked up. And she thought if she could convince me to reverse my vasectomy maybe she could fucking get away with it.

When reading this, I was trying to imagine his writing process. I imagine that when writing the last block that I quote, his process was slow. "Should I include that? I should include the stress; they won't understand the story if I don't." But when he finally wrote the words "she's pregnant", OP snapped. I imagine a pause of anger, followed by a huge change of voice.

The second sentence is active, powerful, and contains the first curse word of the two posts. OP was trying to make excuses or narrations for his wife, but he couldn't hide her true nature, even from himself. Precursing it with "tearfully" to build sympathy for her didn't help. He snapped and identifies her with few words and no excuses as the manipulative little psychopathic whore that she really is.

I'm not a violent guy, but I very genuinely wanted to slap this shit out of her right then. I still don't know what's worse, the fact that she cheated on me, or the fact that she tried to trick me into raising another man's child - especially since she's known since we met that I fucking hate children, or the fact that she tried to use my love for her to manipulate me.

Look at the violent language and active tone. He's using violent imagery and swearing, which from the rest of these posts and his comments on the first thread seem like they are both atypical for him. What's really interesting here is how unnecessary this paragraph is. It doesn't progress the story or add detail. I bet the first half of the update was written slowly and carefully, but he just had an angry spike. This paragraph exists only to absorb the anger that he had when writing and he never edited it away because he didn't notice its extra-ness. The anger is the story. There is an inner battle going on in this angry man's life, and it seems like it hit a special spike while he was writing that part.

I called my boss and told him I wouldn't be able to make it back in today due to a family emergency. Let's call my boss Dan. Dan is the goddamn best boss I've ever worked for, and has become a good friend.

Dan seems like a good guy. The anger spike ended when he got his mind off of writing about her.

Miniupdate: I'm drunk and Fallout just finished downloading

So for point of view, this comment implies that he's probably had the time to calm down before checking the comment thread---which is unfortunate in my opinion. I like to see anger accompany injustice and I like to see it last. This was two hours after he left an angrily voiced comment agreeing with an insult towards his wife.

The comments are all very supportive of him, but it's childfree. That subreddit's a feminist hell, except a weird one because the women there hate pregnancy and "mombies" more than they hate men. They were telling him to divorce her, make sure he's not listed as the father, protect his assets, and they were saying some things about her that were as well deserved as they were unkind.

Unfortunately, our protagonist ultimately leaves a comment saying that he doesn't decide to leave his wife:

I haven't decided if I'm going to divorce her yet, but if she keeps the baby that decision is made for me. I'm not raising a little fucktrophy for her infidelity.

At least he has the self respect not to be a cuck father. Men have done worse in our blue pill world.


Lessons Learned:

  • The pedestal is one hell of a drug.

  • Denial and anger are a very interesting mixture.

  • Never marry.

  • And for God's sake, never reverse your vasectomy.