Content Warning: Stuggles with Infertility, Pregnancy Complications, Mental Health
Starting and raising a family is one of those journeys that will look completely different for every person and every couple.
What comes very "easily" for some will not for others, and the struggles can be incredibly emotional, empathized the members of the "Am I Overreacting?" (AIO) subReddit.
Redditor LookoutLockout and his wife had been trying to conceive for four months when they decided to take a break after being unsuccessful so far.
When his wife took the "failure" increasingly hard, especially as women around her became pregnant, the Original Poster (OP) didn't know what to do, but he felt especially lost when she lashed out at him for even wanting to be supportive of his sister and future nephew.
He asked the sub:
"Am I overreacting for wanting to see a therapist after my wife changed the locks because I went to a baby shower?"
The OP posted four screenshots of text messages between himself and his wife, along with explanatory text.
The OP wrote that he and his wife were struggling to conceive.
"My wife and I are both 30. We tried to have our first baby for four failed cycles and decided to take a break for a few cycles because we were taking it pretty hard."
"It's been three months since we tried."
The OP's wife had mixed reactions to his younger sister getting pregnant, starting with RSVPing 'No' to her baby shower without the OP's opinion.
"Meanwhile, my little sister is pregnant with her first baby, which I'm very excited about. My wife was, too, at first."
"The first slide is me asking why she RSVPd 'no' to the baby shower (taking place two hours away) without talking to me first."
"After talking that night, she said I could go to the baby shower and seemed supportive. She said she was 'just in her feelings.'"
You can see the first text message slide here:
The OP's wife said of him going to the baby shower:
"[I'm] not feeling up to baby things.""It'd hurt my feelings if you went without me. She has everything and everyone she needs. I need you."
u/LookoutLockout/Reddit
The OP again received mixed signals when it was time for him to travel for the baby shower.
"The second slide is the week of the shower. We had therapy the next day, after which my wife was once again supportive of me going."
"Other than saying she'd miss me (I went up a day early to spend more time with family), nothing seemed off."
You can see the second text message slide here:
The OP's wife texted:
"I've been thinking about it and I don't think it's fair for you to go. I'm still grieving. Even if you're not.""Going to this is like twisting the knife. You're twisting the knife."
The OP reassured:
"I'm still torn up too. I can't wait to raise kids with you, but we've both always wanted to be an aunt and uncle, and now we get to be! I wanna share a little joy while things are tough."
The OP's wife wrote:
"You're literally choosing another pregnant woman over me... You can't understand how hurtful that is?"
u/LookoutLockout/Reddit
Then the OP's wife confronted him about not being there for her while he was at the baby shower.
"The third slide was a bomb drop I got at the shower."
You can see the third slide here:
The OP's wife confronted him:
"What kind of man can't stay by his woman's side when her world is crashing down? It's making me sick.""You're off celebrating when I'm the lowest I've ever been. This is like emotional cheating almost."
"You're going to have to make up for this betrayal for a while because I am hurting thanks to you."
u/LookoutLockout/Reddit
Then the OP's wife seriously escalated the situation:
"In the fourth slide, I still don't know what f**k all happened, but she changed the locks to our house."
"We had a big argument when she came back to let me in, and she insisted this was worse than me cheating on her."
You can see the fourth text message slide here:
The OP's wife wrote after locking him out:
"I already told you, you BETRAYED me. You don't get to just come home [willy-nilly] like nothing happened.""Your bag is already packed. Go stay at a hotel for the night or something."
u/LookoutLockout/Reddit
The OP wasn't sure what to do after being locked out.
"It's been almost a week since then. We've been to therapy again, she saw her doctor, and neither of them seems too concerned because she's acting normal now, and even wants to TTC (Try to Conceive) again."
"I told her I scheduled a first session with my own therapist because I'm hurt, and I don't want to talk to her, much less try for a baby, until I work through this myself."
"She said I'm overreacting because she made it right immediately (came home and let me in the house) and hasn't brought up how she feels about the shower since that night (except for in therapy)."
"AIO?"
Fellow Redditors weighed in:
- NOR: Not Overreacting
- YOR: You're Overreacting
Some reassured the OP that his wife's actions were not being taken seriously enough.
"So you guys tried to conceive for four months, took a break for three, and then she locked you out of the house for not skipping a super special life moment with your own sister, after you guys had talked about it a bunch?"
"Unless there's more to this story, you are NOR, and I would want to understand from her therapist and doctor why they aren't concerned with such erratic behavior."
"That isn't to say there can't be some explanation or that you shouldn't give her time to work through her feelings, but if she's coming out of this with the sense she didn't do anything wrong here, that feels like the wrong takeaway."
"Support, validation, and respect are two-way streets, and in those text exchanges I really only see one of you trying to understand and support the other one." - Competitive-Fox-38
"I read the messages before reading the caption and assumed that she must've just been through something incredibly traumatic, like a late-stage miscarriage. To find that the trigger was 'not conceiving naturally quickly enough' blew my mind..."
"Someone's overreacting here, and it's not the OP." - Loose_bandicoot_1666
"My sister and I got pregnant at the same time a few years ago (her with her first, me with my second). I miscarried at 10 weeks, and then couldn't get pregnant again. And I still showed up for her at anything baby-related."
"It was absolutely crushing watching her reach all the pregnancy milestones (first ultrasound, announcing the pregnancy, finding out the gender, having the baby) when I still hadn't conceived again, feeling like I should have been experiencing all those things, too."
"(I finally ended up getting pregnant again after almost a year of trying, and for the record, with both my daughter and the pregnancy I miscarried, we had gotten pregnant on the FIRST try. So I get feeling like it's taking an eternity, but still, OP's wife is acting really unreasonable about all of this.)"
"Also, did anyone notice how she's like, 'It won't get better until you put a baby in me'…? Like, it's entirely on OP, and if she's not pregnant yet, it's somehow his fault… That felt icky to me." - jetstream116
"As an infertile male partner, that part about him putting a baby in her was appalling. I'm self-conscious and beat myself up about it enough already, but if my spouse were ever to say something like that to me, like it's my fault, I would be devastated, not to mention heartbroken."
"My partner and I have a beautiful child through a donor, and an otherwise perfectly normal love life; but that only came about after nine years of classes, doctor visits, insurance calls, cycle tracking, you name it."
"For OP's wife to basically give up after four months due to the stress and be this emotionally abusive is kinda pathetic if you ask me." - New-Pollution2005
"I would be so turned off to reproducing with this woman if I were OP. She is punishing him for not getting her pregnant quickly enough for her liking, as though that's solely up to him or within his ability to control!, and acting like a victim when there is absolutely nothing medically wrong with either of them (that we know of). She is literally lashing out because she is IMPATIENT."
"At first, I thought she had miscarried or had a failed IVF cycle or something, and I was going to give her some leeway for crazy hormones, but now I'm wondering if 'b***h' is her everyday baseline. I'm glad OP is seeking professional guidance, because she doesn't seem like a good person to be raising kids with. God forbid they actually do have infertility issues down the line…" - SnooGuavas4208
"As someone who's worked with children and had unwell, abusive parents that would fly off the handle at the tiniest perceived things, and never take responsibility for their own actions…"
"OP, for the sanity and love of your imaginary possible-future-child, please don't have a child with this person. This type of behavior (and viewing her partner as cheating on her with his sister for going to her baby shower) would be devastating for child development. Please don't do it."
"I thought I was reading about someone who'd had a late miscarriage or multiples. And even then, treating your SO like he's cheating from going to his SISTER's baby shower, and after saying he could go? This is wild. I'm sorry, OP, but your SO is not well and honestly not fit to be a parent." - SnoopiTanuki
Others agreed and pointed out that, on average, it takes most couples longer than four months to successfully get pregnant.
"So you were just trying to conceive naturally and stopped after only four months? I don't get it... why? It takes most people much longer than four months to conceive a child; it's completely normal for couples your age to take as long as a year to conceive if they are having sex every two or three days at least."
"If she is that desperate to conceive, why did she stop doing the one thing that will make her conceive?" - kindcrow
"Yes, it can be disappointing when you aren't successful in conceiving right away, but it is normal that it could take up to a year. Her reaction to you wanting to go to your sister's shower is way over the top and not remotely the behavior of someone in their right mind."
"It would be different if you had struggled through years of fertility issues, or she had just had a miscarriage. Then I could understand her being upset and having a hard time celebrating your sister."
"That said, changing the locks is next-level vindictive and crazy based on the info you have given." - Mysterious-Crow1295
"Four months is not a lot of time for trying to conceive. It took my husband and me about a year and a half to finally get pregnant with our first child. I had to have a tubal flushing procedure, which is a non-invasive procedure to flush out the fallopian tubes. I got pregnant a little over a month later."
"Sometimes women who took birth control prior to trying to conceive, have issues with the fallopian tubes being clogged. The success rate with this procedure is very high. I can truly understand now if you are questioning having kids with her. She seems extremely irrational and a little unhinged over something as simple as supporting your family." - PretendHistory6904
"I actually thought I was reading about her grieving a late miscarriage or a stillbirth, too. Being this weird about just four months of failed attempts is kinda lunatic, and the wife needs therapy. It's not reasonable for her to expect OP to stay home from his own sister experiencing this special moment." - Heykurat
"Being heartbroken because you haven't conceived after four months is absolutely wild and makes me suspect someone skipped sex ed entirely and doesn't understand everything that's going on here. Heck, a new couple that can't keep their hands off each other could go this long before realising maybe they should be playing it a bit safer!"
"Changing the locks is so off the chain as a response to going to his sister's baby shower because she couldn't conceive at lightning speed…" - FidgitForgotHisL-P
After receiving feedback, the OP shared an update in a second post.
"Knowing my wife, she doesn't always hear how she comes off, so I started by sitting her down and reading our text conversations out loud to her, and then I let her sit with it for a bit."
"After about five minutes of silence, she started crying and said she was a monster and didn't recognize herself."
"I asked her why that might be, and she offered some concerns that I think are genuine."
"First, she works in an office, and she said four of her coworkers are pregnant, two have started maternity leave, and for the last couple of weeks, she's been covering a lot for both of them, so she's been very stressed."
"I knew she'd been working longer hours, but didn't know how much it was stressing her out."
There was also a lot of pressure coming from inside the house, so to speak.
"Second, her parents are extremely pushy about her having kids. They've made comments to us before, which I kind of wrote off as normal, excited first-time grandparents-to-be, but she showed me texts from both of them (in their family group chat) in the last few months, and they've been sending her quite a few articles about fertility, parenting, etc."
"One text even said, 'Are you actually trying, or are you just teasing us?' which clearly hurt her. She shared this with her therapist several sessions ago, but never mentioned it to me."
"Third, she said she's afraid she's projecting her parents' frustration with her onto me and subconsciously felt like I'll leave her if we don't have kids soon, so she might have been lashing out to push me away before I could push her away, and she acknowledged that's wrong of her."
The OP and his wife made new plans for the future.
"We've agreed to take a few more months off of trying, so her work stress can eventually decrease, and so we, as a team, can set some boundaries with her parents."
"My wife has agreed she's not going to give them 'trying' updates anymore, and we will just tell them whenever we're ready to announce a pregnancy someday."
"I asked her if she realized she went psycho, and she said yes, saying she 'broke' and doesn't even remember making some of the decisions she made. But she's very remorseful, and I believe her."
"I'm booking with my own therapist, and she is going to continue with hers. Eventually, we may add a couple's therapist, but time and money aren't unlimited."
"She did resume working on the baby blanket she started for our incoming nephew, which she hasn't touched in months. I've kind of left her alone and noticed she cries every so often. I'll give her a hug when I notice. She cooked dinner for the first time in a while (we've been so busy, we've been surviving on frozen meals and DoorDash)."
"This update will probably disappoint those who wanted us to divorce immediately, but it is what it is. The dust is still settling, but I feel like some mending is occurring."
Though the subReddit was concerned by how the OP's wife escalated the situation, they were otherwise relieved to hear that some of their issues were being addressed, if not in the early stages of being resolved.
Fertility and trying to conceive can be incredibly emotional journeys, especially when having a baby is something a person has dreamed about for years and can't seem to have no matter how hard they try. But instead of turning her partner into the enemy, hopefully the OP's wife would see him as her partner, companion, and even a resource in the future.
