After three years of trying, I finally got a positive pregnancy test. Shaking, I surprised my husband with it during dinner. He stared, swallowed hard, and muttered, “We need to talk.” I laughed nervously—until he pulled out his phone, opened his Notes app, and read aloud the list titled “REASONS I CAN’T BE A FATHER”…
I blinked, thinking it was a weird joke. Maybe he was going to say something silly, like “because I’ll spoil the kid too much” or “because I’ll be the fun parent.” But as he started reading, my stomach turned.
“Number one,” he began, “I’m too emotionally unstable. Two, I can’t handle responsibility beyond myself. Three, I’m not sure I want to be married anymore.” His voice cracked on the last part.
I froze. The spaghetti I had cooked sat untouched between us. I stared at him, the room suddenly spinning.
“What are you saying, Tyler?” I whispered, clutching the test stick in my hand like it was my last lifeline.
He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he stared at his plate and sighed. “I’ve been feeling this way for a while, Beth. I didn’t know how to tell you. I thought maybe the pregnancy would never happen. I thought maybe we were just…not meant to be parents.”
I wanted to scream, cry, throw something—anything to shake him out of this. “Then why didn’t you say something before we spent three years trying?”
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” he said. “But now…this changes everything.”
He got up, walked to the door, and said he needed some time to think. He left me there, alone, with a half-eaten dinner and a pregnancy test that now felt more like a curse than a miracle.
The next few days were a blur. He didn’t come home. I didn’t hear from him. His mom called to check on me, confused as to why his phone was off. I didn’t tell her the truth. How could I?
Eventually, I got a text. “I need space. I’m sorry. I’ll send money if you need anything for the baby.” That was it.
I stared at the message for an hour, heart pounding, tears falling. I never replied.
At first, I felt humiliated. Then broken. Then angry. I kept thinking about how he had planned his escape. That Notes app list wasn’t written on a whim—it had bullet points. It was something he crafted, probably while lying next to me in bed, pretending everything was okay.
I wasn’t just pregnant. I was abandoned.