There’s something especially cruel about being vulnerable; about mourning a version of motherhood you’ll never have, only to have that moment hijacked by someone else’s strange, self-serving idea of a solution.
This 40-year-old woman has been with her 41-year-old boyfriend for two years now. They live together and are now discussing having a baby together.
While she has never had kids before, her boyfriend has a three-year-old daughter from a previous marriage. While she’s always dreamt of being a mom, she has encountered fertility issues that have gotten in the way of this.
After 20 years of experiencing problems, she got an official diagnosis: endometriosis. It’s been hard for her to come to terms with the fact that she cannot ever carry her own baby.
Yesterday evening, she and her boyfriend were discussing what options they had for starting a family, and her boyfriend brought up something shocking.
“Out of nowhere, he suggested his first wife could be our surrogate because she ‘owes him a life debt.’ At first, I laughed because he and his (more recent) ex-wife don’t get along at all,” she explained.
“But then he clarified: he wasn’t talking about his second wife (his daughter’s mom). He married someone when he was 19. Apparently, he had a college friend from Nigeria whose visa was about to expire, and they got married so she could stay.”
“He said it was just a business arrangement. He also mentioned that he did it because he wanted to do something nice for someone. They never lived together or slept together. Honestly, that part doesn’t bother me.”
What she is upset about is that she questioned her boyfriend about how many times he had gotten married at the start of dating him, and he only told her one.
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Given that she has been open and honest about her own personal information, she can’t believe her boyfriend lied to her about something so major.
She responded to her boyfriend that she couldn’t sort out her feelings about having his first ex-wife carry their child, which made him mad.
“He told me I should be grateful he’s even offering and accused me of being ungrateful for not ‘taking advantage of this nice thing,'” she added.
“I tried to explain that I’m not the bad guy here, and just need to process the fact that he lied about his marriage history, and that I don’t feel comfortable with this idea.”
“So…[am I the jerk] for being upset he lied about being married twice and for not wanting his first ex-wife to be our surrogate?”
He tried to spin the lie into a solution, and then flipped it on her like she was the problem for not being excited about it, and that’s what bothers me the most.
If she pushes past her discomfort just to keep the peace, it’s going to turn into resentment later, and that’s not a great way to bring a child into the world.
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By Bre Avery Zacharski
Hi, I'm Bre, Chip Chick's CEO! I have a degree in Textile/Surface Design from The Fashion Institute of Technology, and... More about Bre Avery Zacharski
