Whether or not to have kids is one of the biggest deal breakers in a relationship. That is why it’s so important to make sure you and your partner are truly on the same page about the future. When you want completely different things, it can be difficult to find a way forward.
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One woman thought she and her boyfriend both wanted to remain child-free. So when she suddenly found out she was pregnant, it came as a huge shock, and she assumed it was just really bad luck. Little did she know, her boyfriend was about to make a disturbing confession: the pregnancy had not been an accident after all.
Read the full story below.
The woman had never wanted children, so finding out she was pregnant came as a huge shock
Image credits: Ketut Subiyanto/Pexels (not the actual photo)
Then her boyfriend made a confession that changed everything: the pregnancy had not been an accident after all
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Interfering with someone’s reproductive choices is a really big deal and can affect them for the rest of their life
Image credits: freestocks.org/Pexels (not the actual photo)
Pregnancy is no easy feat. Even before the baby arrives, a woman has to get through months of physical discomfort, from morning sickness to constant hormonal shifts. Then there’s birth itself, which can be one of the most painful experiences a body ever goes through.
And once the baby is here, the real work only starts, with endless sleepless nights and years of time and money spent raising them. Parenting is one of the biggest, most life-altering commitments a person can ever make, so tricking someone into it without their consent is a genuinely serious thing to do.
That is exactly what makes this story so unsettling. The woman had already made it clear that she did not want children, and she believed her boyfriend felt the same way. By secretly interfering with their birth control plan, he took away her ability to make one of the biggest decisions of her life for herself.
What he did is known as reproductive coercion. As clinical psychologist Anne P. DePrince, Ph.D., author of Every 90 Seconds: Our Common Cause Ending Violence Against Women, explains, the term refers to behavior that interferes with someone’s ability to make their own decisions about reproductive health.
Sadly, this is very common. DePrince points out that up to 1 in 5 women experience reproductive coercion at some point in adulthood, and one BBC poll of 1,000 women even suggested it could affect around half of women between the ages of 18 and 44. It can also start really young, with more than 1 in 10 sexually active teenage girls saying they had been through it recently.
Reproductive coercion can take different forms. A partner may pressure someone to become pregnant or secretly interfere with contraception. It can also involve forcing someone to continue a pregnancy they do not want. In other cases, the pressure goes in the opposite direction, with someone being pushed to terminate a pregnancy against their wishes.
The main issue is that one person is trying to control a choice that belongs to the other. It does not always involve physical force, which can make it harder to recognize. Sometimes it appears through guilt or threats. It may also come with promises that everything will somehow work out. None of that makes the loss of choice any less damaging.
The main issue is that one person is trying to control a choice that belongs to the other. It does not always involve physical force, which can make it harder to recognize. Sometimes it appears through guilt or threats. It may also come with promises that everything will somehow work out. None of that makes the loss of choice any less damaging.
Looking back at this story, the boyfriend’s claim that he acted out of love does not make what he did acceptable. Love should not involve secretly changing someone else’s future. It is also hard to understand how he expected this to create a happy family when his girlfriend had clearly said that motherhood was not the life she wanted.
For the woman, this may be incredibly difficult to process. She is already dealing with the physical strain of pregnancy while trying to understand a major betrayal. Hopefully, she has trusted people around her and can access the support she needs, both for her wellbeing and for any decisions ahead. Most importantly, she deserves to feel safe while deciding what comes next.
What do you think of this situation? Share your thoughts below.
Readers told the woman to take this very seriously because what her boyfriend did crossed a major line
