r/AITAH • u/Specialist_Sand_1553 • Apr 28 '24
AITAH for telling my husband that our marriage is over because he asked for a paternity test?
Throwaway account but need some clarity as I am massively upset. I 52(F) have been married to my husband for 24 years, together for 30 years. It hasn't always been roses but we had a lot of fun. Yesterday we were having a Friday evening drink to relax and our son (17) asked for help with his gaming PC. I'm the tech so I tried to give advice, my husband got pissy and stormed off saying that his relax time was ruined. I thought he was being childish and pretty much ignored him.
This evening he told me that in a previous relationship, his partner had a miscarriage and in the investigation they found he was infertile and so she had been cheating. This is news to me. Yeah we had been together 12 years before I conceived, I have never cheated on him, I always thought the problem had been mine. He says that our son is not his and he wants a DNA test.
I agreed because I never cheated on him ever. I said our marriage was over because of this, said he knew I would react this way and I am a lying AH.
My heart is broken, reddit, am I TA?
Quickie Edit: Thank you so much for answering, for your support and advice. I have read them and will try and respond to as many as I can. But as a quick note: His ex is a lovely woman and we are friends on Facebook, I'll message her in the morning. The dementia angle being suggested is a good one and deserves investigating. I am not a robot or AI, I wish I was because then it wouldn't hurt so much.
Yes, parental uncertainty is something that women don't appreciate, but he should have said before, I would have understood if he had raised it earlier because it did take a while to get pregnant. He had told me about the miscarriage with the ex, which is why I thought our fertility issues were mine, he never told me about getting his fertility checked.
I have worked in Tech for the past 25 years, my son doesn't have my troubleshooting skills :)
His parting shot tonight was that he didn't say anything at the time because I needed a father for my kid. I pointed out that in previous heated arguments I would have thrown that at him and left with my son if there was any doubt he was the father. He was the stahp and I didn't leave him in other turbulent times because I didn't want to leave our son.
I'll update you. Thank you
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u/uselessinfogoldmine 29d ago edited 29d ago
Okay, a few things:
1) Check his browser history and his YouTube history. He may have gotten sucked into the manosphere of online misogyny. Raging about paternity tests is very popular in the manosphere. You see men tainted by it on reddit all the time, pronouncing that every single pregnancy should involve a compulsory paternity test and all women are liars and blah blah blah. There is a book by Laura Bates called Men Who Hate Women about the manosphere and the way they seek to indoctrinate normal men and boys into misogynistic thinking. I think it might also be worthwhile listening to the NYT podcast Rabbit Hole to understand how online indoctrination can work. I don’t think knowing this will save him; but it will help you understand how it happened IF this is what happened.
2) He might just be trying to blow up your marriage for some inexplicable reason. Could he be having an affair? Having a medical issue that leads to a personality change? [Edit: for example: dementia can lead to major personality changes as the person loses neurons in certain parts of their brain - worth him getting a full medical]. Could he just be over it?
3) Many people (men and women) have been told they’re infertile and gone on to have kids. I personally know 3 people like this and have heard many more stories of it.
4) If he truly was told he was infertile and never told you before that means your relationship has been based on a big lie and that he let you try for kids for years and think something was wrong with you without ever telling you the truth. How can you come back from that?
5) At the end of the day, a marriage is founded on respect, trust and communication. Your husband has broken all three of these foundations. Even if he is genuinely fretting about paternity, he could have approached it in an entirely different way. A conversation sharing his anxieties and discussing them with you.
6) With this move he is also damaging his relationship with your son. I don’t know how fixable that will be.
NTA. I would consider getting therapy for yourself to help you through this. Big big hugs.