There exists a phenomenon that happens to men and it often does not carry the social reaction I feel it deserves. Some women trick their male partners into procreation. Like so many other things people do, there are various reasons for this. Sometimes it is done as a misguided effort to save a failing relationship and sometimes it’s simply because a woman wants to have a child.
I had the opportunity to play the fly on the wall in observing this situation unfold around a friend of mine. He had been dating a girl for some months. Things were going well so he decided to buy a house and invite her move in with him. This decision made sense for him; he was living with his parents at the time but had a sizeable amount of savings and wanted to take advantage of a first time home-buyer’s tax incentive. She moved in as planned, he paid the mortgage and property taxes, and she paid the utility bills. All was well.
Then, one early Saturday morning while Brittany and I were having breakfast at a local diner, he called me with the news. His girlfriend was pregnant. In a panic, he asked me to come over. Brittany and I scarfed down our omelettes and rushed over to the home he shared with his now-pregnant girlfriend.
My friend and I sat at the picnic table in his back yard. He didn’t say much. His hands were trembling and he had that thousand yard stare that soldiers sometimes get after surviving combat. I became worried about him. He was an absolute wreck.
Meanwhile, his girlfriend was having a much different experience. If he was a soldier surviving combat, she was a woman who just won the lottery. She announced her pregnancy by bringing a stroller and some baby books into their living room. The items spoke for themselves and she was all smiles, seemingly more focused on the way in which she told him than the fact that she was pregnant with his child.
When Brittany and I left their house that morning, something seemed off to me. I could’ve attributed her attitude to time, after all she did have longer to digest the fact that she was pregnant. It still didn’t sit right with me.
