New parents are often faced with a whole host of questions and concerns in the first year of their baby's life, and those questions and concerns are usually focused on the baby's development. But some parents end up facing additional questions that sometimes have dire consequences.
A new dad recently shared on Reddit that he and his wife have a great thing going … or they did until very recently. He writes that they have been together for three years and married for one.
"Relationship has been the best of my life and relatively smooth throughout – no red flags," he says. "Our child is healthy and happy. We're in a pretty great familial situation currently. We are blessed to really have no real stresses or anxieties."
His wife recently made an unexpected joke.
Things have been great until very, very recently.
"We were at the grocery store and my wife asked me not to purchase something because of potential BPA in the item (a chemical which can leach into food and impact fertility)," he writes. "I joked that I clearly didn't have issues with fertility (since we had a kid as soon as we started trying), and I've been consuming that item regularly. Then she joked, 'well maybe our kid's not yours.'"
He immediately reacted.
"It took me a second to really process what she said, but once I did, I got very sad and upset. I initially told her, 'don't joke about that,' and 'why would you say [something] like that?' And I stopped talking the rest of the time at the grocery store."
Now he's insisting on taking a paternity test.
"But once we got to the car, the idea had built up enough in my head that I told her I'm going to getting a paternity test immediately (I'm shopping on Amazon for one as I write this). She pushed back and started going down a number of defensive vectors, from 'why don't you trust me?' to 'is your reaction saying something about you I should be worried about?' To which, I replied, heatedly, 'I understand the idea is ludicrous, but you suggested it, completely out of the blue, and now it's out there. And there's no way to put this question away ever again except to actually get a test.' After a few rounds of this, she acquiesced and left me to go look for a test."
He says he trusts her, but ...
"I trust my wife, she's a fantastic person, a successful professional, a great mother, etc. But I had never even fathomed that our child wasn't mine until she made what was, in all likelihood, the worst joke and retort in history."
Reddit is pretty split.
Plenty of people had a lot to say about his wife's joke, and it seems that people are pretty evenly split about whether or not it was OK to make.
"My parents also joked about it, but it’s really obvious i‘m my father’s daughter and my mother has no reason to doubt as she is the one who gave birth," said a commenter.
"In my opinion these jokes are okey with older children since they usually resemble both parents at least in some way. With infants it’s difficult to see traits of yourself in them. I don’t blame somebody if they are not comfortable with these jokes. Especially the father since he has to rely on trust."
Some people do think he has pretty major trust issues.
However, not everyone gets it.
"The escalation here is really fast to me," another commenter said. "She makes a joke at the cash register and by the time you get to the car it’s a major issue. That doesn’t seem like you trust your wife especially since you started this joking interaction with the joke about your own fertility. Her joking retort seems completely normal to me. Your response, to ask for a dna test within maybe twenty minutes is not at all normal to me and may damage this supposedly fabulous relationship."
Some suspect that he might have issues due to past problems.
Another commenter was quick to agree, pointing out that it's possible the new dad has dealt with cheating in the past.
"This is such a good point!" the commenter said. "My husband and I are ALWAYS making jokes about the kids being the mailman's! But I once said something along those lines to a friend like 'Maybe your mom had a thing for the mailman?' Immediately she got serious and said they don't make jokes like that in her family due to past infidelity. Maybe OP [the original poster] has similar wounds that caused his escalation?"
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