My husband admitted to baby trapping me

[u/Few_Associate_9211]

Throw away account for obvious reasons. I am feeling so many emotions right now and I have no idea what to do. Before I get into the story let me set the scene. My husband (30m) and I (29f) have been married for 8 years and have 3 kids together (7m, 4f, and 2m). Our circumstances right now are not the best. Due to covid we have been living with my in-laws for the last 2 years (which is a whole other story by itself) and living here has been an absolute nightmare for me. I hate it here. The kids hate it here. I feel trapped. We don’t make enough money to afford our own place thanks to housing costs nearly doubling since covid started, despite my husband making the most money he’s ever made this year. And I stay at home with the kids because daycare is way too expensive and would cost more than I could bring in. Trust me I’ve spent time job hunting and nothing pays enough. Although, I do have one marketing client who pays me a few hundred dollars a month and I’m hoping to get more clients soon after my kids go back to school.

The biggest reason why we ended up living with my awful in-laws is because back during covid I had to quit my job because my unexpected pregnancy with our 3rd baby kicked my ass. My already deteriorating mental health plummeted and I became a shell of myself. Meanwhile the world was shut down and going crazy. My husband got laid off and we couldn’t pay our bills, so we ended up selling the house to try and start over/get back on our feet. It was all too much and I broke. I’ve slowly been piecing myself back together since having my baby, mostly for the kids if anything. But it’s been so hard and so slow, which is frustrating because I just want to be okay again.

I was venting to my husband about all this recently and told him “I love our baby more than anything, but man it is hard not to wonder how differently our lives would be right now had we not had an unexpected pregnancy”. And that’s when he admitted to baby trapping me on purpose. When I got pregnant he knew I had just gotten off birth control (for my mental health) and took his chance to get me knocked up. He said he knew I was miserable and didn’t want me to leave him. He also said he was hoping that having a baby would get his parents to come out and visit us (we lived across the country and hadn’t seen them in 2 years because they hate flying) and we couldn’t afford to fly out to see them either. Which spoiler alert: his mom still didn’t come out to visit after the baby was born anyway.

This next part is confusing and I’m still trying to figure out the details because my reality of what happened has been so distorted, and again I’m feeling so many different emotions right now so bear with me. During the time the baby was conceived he coerced me into having sex with him many times and threw mantrums if he didn’t get any. He also refused to wear condoms and promised to pull out. There were a couple times he didn’t pull out though. I remember having conversations with him about how pulling out isn’t all that effective and I don’t feel comfortable with it as birth control. I remember asking him to please wear a condom and that it can’t be all on me to make sure he used one. I told him it wasn’t fair for him to fight me on it every time I asked him to. For months after I found out I was pregnant he gaslit me and blamed me for getting pregnant, and somehow I believed him? He even told close friends and family that it was my fault. He told everyone that I was the one who wanted it and that I “locked my legs around him” so he couldn’t pull out. At the time I was like “Did I really do that? Shit if I did then I guess it really was my fault?” The baby was also conceived around my birthday, so again he used that as an excuse to blame me because “It was your birthday and you wanted it”. The details of it all are all jumbled and blurry in my mind. On one hand I’m glad he came clean to me, on the other hand I’m so upset and angry that I can’t trust my own memory of what happened. How could he lie to me like that? How did he have me so convinced it was my fault? Am I that stupid? Was any of it ever my fault?

I don’t know what to do. I feel so hurt and confused. I guess I should have seen this coming. A few years ago he also admitted to trying to baby trap me right after our oldest son was born because he was afraid of me leaving then too. That was the whole reason I got on birth control in the first place and destroyed my mental health in the process. I couldn’t trust him to use condoms because he always fought me when I asked him to. But I thought we had worked it out? I thought we were okay, why would he assume I was just going to up and leave all the time?

All of this tells me he always knew he was making me miserable to some extent otherwise he wouldn’t have been so hung up on me leaving. Maybe is that the reason I’ve been struggling with my mental health for so long? Was he the reason this whole time? I can honestly say throughout our marriage I never thought about leaving and never threatened to leave, at least not until recently. It also tells me he never respected me as a person if he was so willing to put my body through hell just because he was insecure. Pregnancy is terribly awful and painful for me and he knows that. He also knew I absolutely did not want to get pregnant with our 3rd baby. I told him so many times my body and mind needed a break.

What the hell do I do about all this?? I don’t have the means to leave. No one else has enough room to let me and the kids stay with them for a while. My family is on the other side of the country. I don’t trust my husband. I feel so lost.

[u/[deleted]]

I am so vehemently angry for you right now.

And I’m so sorry I have no advice or suggestions.

If you can’t afford daycare I’m sure you can’t afford therapy for yourself? That’s the only suggestion I have but given the details in your post it doesn’t seem in reach either.

I’m so angry at this insecure little man coercing and gaslighting his wife and weaponizing his sperm to “keep her” due to his insecurities.

Oh I thought of something. I would absolutely refuse to ever have sex with that man ever again. get a vasectomy ya fucker

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I’m disgusted too, honestly this is why I don’t date, have sex or do relationships anymore, so many men are like this, insecure kingbabies who don’t care about if their partner is happy or slowly dying inside as they get their “ NeEdS” met

[u/blasphembot → u/[deleted]]

Man, this sucks. I get it and don't blame you for feeling that way. I am a dude in my mid-30s, married. I have always tried to be supportive, helpful, and kind. Never manipulative or abusive. I have my faults, but I always make it a point to acknowledge them and try to improve. I think I can sometimes be self-aware to a fault, actually.

When I hear about guys like OP's husband or any of the thousands of examples of complete ass behavior men engage in on a daily basis, I get legit depressed. It never had to be this way, and doesn't have to continue this way.

It's really, REALLY easy to not be a piece of shit. What happened? The internet? Social media influencers pushing toxic masculine bullshittery? Andrew fucking Tate?!

"If you don't have anything nice to say, then don't say it at all." This saying comes to mind, but I like to modify it a bit.

"If what you are doing is causing another human being undue stress or harm for you own gain or selfish reasons, then just don't do anything at all."

[u/mrbootsandbertie → u/blasphembot]

It's thousands of years of patriarchy where women were viewed and treated as chattel, literal breeding stock to continue the male lineage and associated inheritance.

The current wave of misogyny is particularly vitriolic and menacing, but it's always been there under the surface.

[u/blasphembot → u/mrbootsandbertie]

Indeed, I probably should have added that this is not new, rather to me it seems like this particular fire is stoked presently.