Have you ever found yourself in so heinous of a situation that you genuinely cannot tell right from wrong anymore? It happens more often than you think. Some subjects can push you to the brink in unexpected ways. A Redditor shared her experience involving her husband and her friend, a single mom, and her post elicited a lot of strong feelings from commenters.
The woman explained that she and her husband were both close friends with a woman who is a single mom. She considered the woman to be one of her best friends. She said that her friend had a baby three years ago. The friend never revealed who the father was but said he was uninterested in being involved.
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As the child got older, the woman couldn't get over the fact that her friend's son bore a strong resemblance to her own husband. As the resemblance got stronger, the subject began eating at her more. When she couldn't take it a moment longer, she spilled her theory and asked the two to take a paternity test.
A nagging hunch led a woman to open a can of worms many believed she should have left shut. She shared her story with Reddit in hopes to get an idea of what to do next.
"So one of my best friends had a kid 3 years ago. She said it was a one night stand and later the guy expressed no interest in being a dad so she raised her son herself," she explained.
"No one has ever seen this guy, not even me."
There was a reason why she was so interested in her friend divulging those details. "The issue is this: this kid looks EXTREMELY like my husband like to an insane degree. The hair color, eyes, face everything. He's even been out with my friend and her son and people have mistaken him to be the dad before," she revealed.
It could just be a weird coincidence, but it might also not be.
"Needless to say for three years now I've had my suspicions but I haven't said anything. My husband is also close to my friend and the timeline works out. We were all living almost in the same neighborhood around the time she got pregnant," she continued.
"Over the past year, it's really eaten at me. I see the resemblance growing more and more," she added.
"It doesn't help that my friend refuses to show me a picture of her son's biological father no matter how much I asked. It kept spiraling until I had a meltdown and confronted both of them, saying that I will pack up and leave if I don't see a paternity test."
"Long story short, my friend got a paternity test but said our friendship is over. The test says my husband isn't the father."
Once she knew the truth, the original poster (OP) started feeling really bad about the whole ordeal: "I feel so ashamed to lose my friend but I thought my husband would slightly understand since even he sees the obvious resemblance between him and this kid. But he has moved out for the time being and I'm worried this is the end of our marriage."
OP wanted to know if she was wrong for insisting on the test. "I honestly felt like I had no other choice. The resemblance was unavoidable and it was eating at me so much that no amount of therapy could help," she explained.
"I thought my husband would understand my fears most of all given my history with past cheating exes. Did I [expletive] up and how badly?"
Most people wanted more information on the situation. One person asked if OP was sure the results couldn't have been falsified.
“Yes, I went with her to a local testing center so I could see the cheek swab done and then the sample taken away,” OP admitted. That said, she still had some serious suspicions.
"But something that has been eating away at me is that my friend chose this center and I had no say. She could have bought them off or influenced them without any way for me to know. But she broke off our relationship pretty much immediately after so I'm at a loss how I'll be able to prove anything at this point," she continued.
“I have thought at length about the test being falsified. It would make a lot of sense that she avoided me right after getting the test because maybe she was afraid the results would come back positive and reveal everything. So yes the timing is not 100% perfect to calm my fears but I’m trying not to think about it too hard because I’m at a point where nothing more can be done.”
One commenter was genuinely stumped by the situation. "Huh. It'd be nice if we could just believe people who swear they weren't cheating … But that's just what cheaters would do, so we can't. I don't even know where to begin judging this one. How would that even go?" the commenter mused.
The commenter went on to explain that a cheating spouse and a lying spouse would likely give a pretty similar response in the situation, so as a person with trust issues, it can be really hard to discern.
"If you suspect cheating but can't prove it, what are you supposed to do? The only two options I can think of are 'burn it all down, right or wrong,' and 'just let it go, right or wrong.'"
Some people felt really strongly that OP was wrong. They believed she unfairly misjudged her husband, absent of other information.
"You need to get therapy, OP. Regardless of whether or not your marriage survives–and if I were your spouse, I don't think it would–this is obviously a pretty serious problem," a commenter wrote.
"You accused him of 1. Having so little respect for your marriage that he'd run around, and 2. Having so little loyalty to his own flesh and blood that he'd be a deadbeat dad. Seriously? I don't think I'd want to be around you again, if you insulted me so terribly."
That said, more people than you'd think said they might have done the same in that situation.
"Based on the information you provided, you had some basis for suspecting infidelity. Your friend knew you were anxious that your husband had cheated but refused to provide even a modicum of information to allay those concerns. She wasn't obliged to, but you could draw some inferences from that," a commenter noted.
“As I see it, you were screwed either way if this was the only way to convince you they hadn’t cheated. The marriage wouldn’t likely last with that belief hanging over its head, but there was an excellent chance it wouldn’t survive a paternity-test demand either.”
One commenter put it best. "She is not the [expletive] for what she thinks and feels, she can't help that," the commenter wrote.
"She is overwhelmingly the [expletive] for how she chose to act on those thoughts and feelings."
These stories are based on posts found on Reddit. Reddit is a user-generated social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website where registered members submit content to the site and can up- or down-vote the content. The accuracy and authenticity of each story cannot be confirmed by our staff.
