The talent some men have for taking a perfectly functional and loving relationship and torpedoing it to oblivion in an incredibly small amount of time will forever be both impressive and deeply sad.
One recent post on the Reddit forum “TrueOffMyChest” highlights this perfectly, as the woman who wrote it says that she’s ending her relationship with her boyfriend and the father of her child because he suddenly, for no good reason, asked for a paternity test.
“I have a bf of 3 years who is the first person relationship wise I have ever loved and I thought we were doing great as new parents but also as partners,” the OP write.
“Friday, he came home and he asked me for a paternity test. Just like that, it was completely out of the blue. I was putting away the dishes and he asked for one, like he was asking what was for dinner. I’m a different race from him but our child, apart from the skin tone, is literally his mirror image from pictures I had seen of him when he was a baby.”
Readers will likely assume that there must have been some reason for this man to suspect that the baby wasn’t his. Surely he wouldn’t go up to his partner and essentially say that he thinks she may have cheated on him and he has a critical mistrust of her, surely he wouldn’t throw his relationship with the mother of his child into chaos for no reason, right?
Well.
“I was stunned when he asked and his reasons were that he had to be sure he was the father, he had to have that certainty. All I remember as he was speaking is just immediately feeling pain.”
Her pain is no surprise, as he’s essentially accusing her of not only cheating, but lying to him every day by passing the baby off as his and having him raise a child that is not his own — a horrifying betrayal. Yet his only reasoning for this is that “he needs to be 100% sure.”
As a result, he’s ruined his relationship. The OP decided to go ahead with the test just to show him that he’s lost his love and broken up his child’s parents for nothing.
“After thinking for a couple of days, I’m going to allow him this paternity test because I have nothing to hide,” she writes. “I never cheated and would have never cheated on him. Once it’s proven that he’s the father, I’m ending it, leaving the same day and I am going to try my best to be a cooperative coparent with him.”
“In the meantime, I’m coming up with my exit plan, a place to live, and a lawyer to work out a custody arrangement and court.”
According to some commenters, including a lawyer “with over 20 years experience, mainly in relationship property/trust litigation,” says that this kind of bombshell has become shockingly common in the past five years. Other Redditors have blamed this on the rise of so-called “men’s rights activists” and incel forums that push their members to do this, claiming that it would be the worst thing in the world to raise another man’s child as their own.
Add this to the mountain of evidence that these people only ruin men’s lives, as well as making life miserable for women and also non-binary people. Just making the world worse for everybody one internet post at a time.
Other commenters, including the lawyer, suspect that it’s either friends or family members who have likely been whispering in this man’s ear for whatever reason, which is often the source of a sudden change in behavior when the relationship was going great. Some even had similar stories to share, reporting that in the end, it was the accuser who was actually cheating and projecting onto their faithful partners.
