Helping someone bring a baby into the world as a surrogate can be a kind and courageous thing to do – but the good deed can also cause havoc in your private life. And one woman has taken to Reddit to figure out if she’s the asshole after her boyfriend got angry that she had carried someone else’s baby before they got together.
‘I have been dating my boyfriend for a little over two and a half years,’ she wrote on the Am I The Asshole (AITA) thread. ‘When we began to get serious, I told him I didn’t want to have kids and wasn’t interested in that as it wouldn’t be fair to string him along.
‘Things were fine until when we were visiting my family a few days ago for my dad’s birthday, he saw some old pictures of me when I was 20 and clearly heavily pregnant,’ she explained. ‘He was upset and asked me what this was and thought I’d had a child and gave them up.
‘I explained to him that my older sister and her husband had been struggling with fertility and she'd had several miscarriages so I offered to carry their child for them and my seven-year-old niece was the result of this,’ she continued. ‘I in no way feel maternal towards her, she is their biological child and I’ve never felt I was anything but the handy oven for that bun.
‘I never brought it up before as I didn't think it mattered and it was so long ago that it wasn't really anyone else's business,’ the woman admitted. ‘He, however, feels differently and when we left he told me I should have told him and said how it wasn't fair I’d been willing to give my sister a child but wouldn't even consider having one with him.’
The original poster [OP] then got upset and told her boyfriend he couldn’t compare carrying a baby for somebody else and raising a child of your own. She apologised for not being honest but maintained that she didn’t feel she had to share the surrogacy with him as it was so long before they were together.
While we agree the two scenarios can’t be compared and it’s hurtful of the OP’s partner to try and declare what’s ‘fair’ about decisions concerning her body, we understand the boyfriend’s pain and confusion at seeing a photo of his girlfriend pregnant after she already said she didn’t want children—you’d feel pretty out of the loop.
As one Reddit user put it: ‘After 2.5 years and a lengthy discussion about children, how did this not come up that you were a surrogate? That sounds like some basic info to tell your possible life partner.’
Although the surrogacy happened long before the OP’s relationship with this man, if she does see a long-term future with him (which she seems to based on their discussions about family) then the right thing to do was to be honest. But, based off of his reaction, we’re not entirely convinced the OP’s boyfriend is being totally honest about not wanting children either.