When two people are engaged, there are countless possibilities for them to look forward to besides “just” their wedding day, from trips they might take to places they might live to the family they might one day grow.
But it’s important for couples to not only be on the same page about what their milestones together will be but also what sacrifices they’ll have to make to reach those milestones, pointed out the members of the “Am I the A**hole?” (AITAH) subReddit.
While Redditor Low-Astronomer-1834 had been excited to start a family with her future husband someday, she became increasingly uncomfortable with the jokes he made about her body and her “making babies” for him.
When she tried to voice her concerns to him, and he dismissed her, the Original Poster (OP) realized this might not be the right relationship for her.
She asked the sub:
“AITAH for calling off the engagement after my fiancé kept saying I would ‘give him a baby’ once we’re married?”
The OP’s fiancé started making comments that made her uncomfortable.
“My fiancé (31 Male) and I (25 Female) have been together for two years and engaged for six months.”
“We’ve both wanted kids at some point, but never set a specific timeline.”
“Lately though, he’s been making comments about how I’ll ‘give him a baby’ once we’re married.”
“The first time he said it, I let it go, but when he said it another time, I joked back, ‘So that’s my job now?'”
“He just said, ‘Yeah, you’re the one making it.'”
The OP tried to set a boundary with her partner, but he wasn’t listening.
“I told him that the way he was wording it was rubbing me the wrong way, and he rolled his eyes and said I was overthinking it.”
“But he said it like that a couple more times later.”
“I started to feel less excited about starting a family.”
“I told him straight up that it was making me uncomfortable after he said it like that again, later.”
“He laughed and said, ‘It’s not that deep, that’s just how it works.'”
“In that moment, I was starting to feel done.”
The OP decided that this wasn’t the future she wanted to sign up for.
“So I called off the engagement.”
“He said I was being ridiculous over ‘a poor choice of words.'”
“His family got involved and is telling me that I misunderstood him and that he just meant he was excited to start a family with me.”
“I’m wondering if I overreacted.”
“AITAH?”
Fellow Redditors weighed in:
- NTA: Not the A**hole
- YTA: You’re the A**hole
- ESH: Everybody Sucks Here
- NAH: No A**holes Here
Some pointed out that even if it were a joke, the ex-fiancé disregarding the OP wasn’t funny.
“The actual issue is that he’s shown he doesn’t care if something bothers her. Who would marry that? You were right to leave, OP. NTA.” – osteomiss
“NTA. What bothers me is he knows it bothers her, it’s super easy to change the wording (because who the f**k says it that way anyhow?!), and he still does it. It’s a d**k move.” – Strange_Depth_5732
“His joking around shows a real lack of empathy for why she would be bothered by that phrasing. It’s really dehumanising/reduces her to a baby oven instead of a person, and minimises the fact that it would be her baby too.”
“Who would want to marry someone so out of touch? And unwilling to listen? NTA.” – mossyfroggy
“I sometimes struggle to change my wording. For example, my partner has a dislike for being called ‘Dear,’ but that’s what my parents used for each other so it’s been ingrained into me from a young age and I often default to it without thinking.”
“But at least I apologise and try not to do it again. I don’t object to her discomfort, or tell her it’s not that deep. I don’t override her objections because I don’t agree with them.”
“He turned a molehill into a mountain and then decided to die on it, and took their relationship right up there with him.” – AutisticPenguin2
“When I was pregnant with our first, my husband said something about me being his ‘baby mama.’ I just don’t like the term. It has very negative connotations to me.”
“I tried to blow it off the first time or two, but it couldn’t shake the yuck feeling it gave me. The next time he said, I told him how I felt about the term.”
“You know what that a**hole did? He hugged me and never said it again.”
“THAT is the reaction you should have gotten, OP. It’s the one you deserved. Anything less than that, and you were totally right to leave.” – almost_cool3579
“I wish I had stood my ground and ended my relationship when it was just about stuff like this. If he won’t listen and respect you over something this little, he won’t listen and respect you over the bigger things later.”
“And every step farther you get, the more involved leaving is, the worse they get.”
“We should absolutely normalize leaving men over little things like this. If they can’t take feedback and improve something this minor, they don’t respect you. There’s no love without respect.” – Critical-Ad1007
Others agreed and were suspicious that “the joke” was a cover for the ex’s true feelings.
“NTA. Trust your gut. It may have been a poor choice of words, but you know him well enough to know if it wasn’t.” – Cultural_Section_862
“It WOULD have been a poor choice of words, if it were one time, but multiple times? That’s all him. That’s what he actually believes about women. And it’s not funny.” – notyoureffingproblem
“A life with a guy like this is death by a million papercuts. One day you wake up and realize you don’t remember who you are and how much of your life you wasted on an a**hole.” – Puzzleheaded-Ad7606
“This, by itself, is a small issue. But you can look at a small issue one of two ways: ‘This is so tiny, it’s not important enough to bother fixing,’ or ‘This is so tiny, it’s super simple to fix.'”
“If he’s got mentality of the first one, he’s gonna be that way for every small issue until that camel’s back breaks, and then he’ll act all shocked that anything is wrong because ‘he never saw it coming’ and ‘nothing serious ever happened in the marriage,’ and he’ll try to pin all the blame on you. It’s better to just get out now and find someone who will listen to you.” – bitofagrump
“My husband, when he was young and stupid, referred to women as females in front of me exactly one time. I told him point blank, ‘Don’t do that.'”
“He asked why, so I explained how it was dehumanizing. We typically refer to animals as male/female, and we use men/women for human beings because we like to separate ourselves from animals. We had a whole conversation about it.”
“He listened. And he has never referred to a human being as ‘a female’ again.”
“It isn’t so much what is being said. It’s whether or not your partner is listening to you. We all say stupid things. But when they hurt people’s feelings, the correct thing to do is apologize and never do it again.” – Reflection-Secure
“She really lucked out. He went mask-off after getting engaged, thinking that things were set in stone at that point. She’s fortunate he made the comment then instead of post-marriage when there would be more repercussions for separating. It could have been pretty awful depending on which state OP is located.” – Khue
“Nahhh, you didn’t ‘misunderstand’ a d**n thing… You finally clocked that man for what he really sees you as: his personal womb-on-legs. He wasn’t talking about having a baby with you, he was talking about you giving him one, like it’s some sort of transaction.”
“You flagged it multiple times, and instead of even pretending to care, he rolled his eyes and kept saying it.”
“That ain’t excitement for a family, that’s possession.”
“And the fact that his whole d**n family is now involved, trying to gaslight you into believing you’re overreacting? RUN.”
“Imagine what they’d be like if you actually got pregnant… telling you how to birth, raise, and probably even name his child. You didn’t call off an engagement. You escaped.” – 410-Writer
“He ROLLED HIS EYES and said ‘it’s not that deep’?!!”
“Eye rolling is dismissive, condescending, and disrespectful. Pretty sure it’s one of the Gottman’s four horsemen of relationship apocalypse. Relationships where one or both partners display criticism, defensiveness, contempt, or stonewalling have a high likelihood to fail.”
“He is displaying three out of four, and the eye roll is a sign of contempt, which is the highest, most accurate predictor of failure.”
“You are definitely not the a**hole. You, however, are escaping a life with one.” – jeangmac
“In my opinion, whether or not it’s a poor choice of words is absolutely irrelevant. If someone you care about tells you in earnest that something you’re doing bothers them, they don’t like it, and they want you to stop, you cannot simply brush them off and carry on as you were.”
“In this scenario, the ex-fiance was in the wrong, but even if it was something where OP was obviously overreacting, a good partner will have that talk with you, find out where you’re coming from, and proceed with your feelings in mind.”
“NTA. You don’t have to marry anyone you don’t want to marry! You don’t even need a reason beyond, ‘Eh, I don’t feel like it,’ but it sounds like you had a good reason that would grow into a great, non-negotiable reason later.” – -justmax-
The OP’s ex-partner and his family might have argued that he was making a joke out of excitement and that the OP was reading too much into things, but it was the guy’s insistence on repeatedly making the joke and minimizing its meaning that made it such a red flag for the subReddit.
While being excited about having a future together and growing a family together is perfectly normal, word choice matters, and if a guy is more interested in what a woman’s body can do than who she is as a whole person, it’s clear that they want very different things from that marriage.