Choosing a name for your baby should bring you and your partner together. But for one woman trying to get pregnant, she recently discovered that her husband lied to her when he suggested a name they both love for their future child. Now, instead of counting down the days until she calls her little one the name they picked for the first time, she's instead feeling seriously betrayed and says all trust has left their relationship.
As the woman explained, she fell in love with one baby name in particular after her husband "came up" with it.
In a post that has since been deleted on Reddit, the woman explained that her husband has a bad little habit: he used to lie a lot. "He would lie to make situations better than they were, to not get in trouble, to not hurt my feelings, etc., " she wrote. But he did promise her he would stop.
"He said that he was done lying because he could see how much calmer and more secure I was when he was telling the truth," she wrote.
This all becomes important now that the two are actively trying to have kids. About two years ago, they came to an agreement about a name that they both liked, "Addie Mae," and used the name often when they would talk about their future family.
"We are so excited to be parents, so it's not like we said it once and dropped it and never spoke of it again," she explained. "We talked about it a lot."
But their baby name plans have come to a sudden halt on her end, after she snooped though his phone and discovered where the name actually came from.
For some reason, things felt off in the couple's relationship and the woman was worried that her husband was starting to lie again. So she did something that she wasn't very proud of: She snooped in her husband's social media account. Of course, she browsed through his conversations with an ex-girlfriend first and luckily she didn't see any recent conversations.
But she did want to check and see if they had been chatting at any point throughout their marriage. "When I scrolled up a little more I saw something that caught my eye," she wrote. "It was a message from when they were together which said 'If we end up getting married and having a little girl, can we name her Addie Mae?'"
The woman was livid. "He NEVER told me that his ex-girlfriend came up with the name, and that was what they were planning on naming their child," she added. Now she wants to be able call him on his lie, but if she does that she'll also reveal her own dirty secret.
"Should I bring it up?" she asked.
Many people online felt like the major red flag wasn't that he used a baby name from his ex; it was that he lies so dang much.
"Why is everyone so focused on the name?" one person commented. "The real issue is that your husband compulsively lies to you. You can't trust him, even when he says he's stopped he hasn't. It doesn't matter what he promises you, he'll instantly go back on his word if it means he gets what he wants."
And someone else shared their own experience with a lying spouse. "Listen, I really really hate to tell you this but I was married to someone who lied in order to make situations easier," the person explained. "They were small lies, and usually well-intended. It creeped me out but I rationalized it. Ultimately what I learned that to someone for whom convenience and pleasantness is more important than honesty, convenience and pleasantness will always be more important than honesty. And if they will lie about small things, they will lie about big things."
"Aren't you … concerned … about having children with someone you know not to be trustworthy?" a third person wrote. "And who you also know calculates his lies against you to the point where he knows how his lies affect you? He didn't stop lying to you (according to him) because it was the right thing to do, he claims he stopped lying because he liked that you were calmer, basically, HOW YOU MADE HIM FEEL, when he told the truth. This is not a good guy, or at least a guy making healthy choices, Original Poster. I'm sorry. He needs therapy."
But not everyone agrees. Some people thought the woman was to blame for spying on her husband in the first place.
"If you don't like the name anymore because of this, you need to figure out how to tell him you were snooping," one person wrote. "If you don't tell him, then you're lying about his lie of omission and nothing is fixing anything."
And someone else thought the woman was overreacting. "I'll go against the grain here and say I don't see the big deal. You can't assume he'll never ever lie again for the rest of your lives," the person wrote.
"Quite frankly, you shouldn’t have gone through his phone," another person wrote. "I don’t care about your 'open phone policy'… it’s just blatantly disrespectful. And when you did go through his phone, and saw he HADN’T done what you suspected, you should have stopped there, instead of reading through their history that occurred before you guys were even together."
In the end, the woman admitted that spying was not her best moment.
After seeing the response to her story in the comments, the woman did admit that "going through his stuff is wrong. I'll be reaching out to a therapist for both of us," she wrote. "I see one individually, so I'll be bringing up that I need help with how to rebuild my level of trust with him, or when to call it on this relationship. I don't believe we are at that point despite our issues. But the lying and my snooping are not signs that we have our (expletive) together by any means."
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