'AITA for wanting to divorce my wife after she gave birth and I found out on Facebook?' UPDATED

AITA for wanting to divorce my wife after she didn't tell me she gave birth?

Capital-Scheme-8294 writes:

It's stupid to think I'm at this point, but here I am. My soon to be ex-wife (28F) and I (29M) have wanted kids for years and were thrilled when she finally got pregnant last year. From day one, I wanted to be the most supportive husband and future father I could.

Her father was never involved in her life. I used to work as a tech in labor and delivery, and my brother, to put it kindly, is not the most involved father. I saw too many problems up close when it came to lacking husbands, and I would be damned before I made the same mistakes.

The problem is, roughly four weeks into her pregnancy, everything started going downhill. She stopped intimacy. Fair enough. Hormones and stress make that a problem, so I went full stop. But then she didn't want any physical interaction. No cuddling, no kissing, slowly becoming more and more distant.

Her eating constantly changed and she was terrible about it. She would demand I get her something all day, then the moment I gave it to her, she wanted something else, screaming at me. OK, again, hormonal issues, I get it, no problem.

She never let me go to any appointments, no groups she went to, spent more time away. She became cold and bitter. Constantly angry at me. This went on for months.

She slapped me a couple of times when I forgot one of her dozens of tasks she assigned me during the day. She stopped doing anything for the house a month into the pregnancy. Sure, she's pregnant, I get it, moving around is hard, but she wouldn't even do laundry about four weeks in, and by five weeks, I did everything. I'm also the primary source of income. I barely sleep. I'm running on fumes.

She made me sleep in the guest room. She would always try and pick fights. I never once raised my voice, my hand, or my tone. I sat there and constantly mentally reminded myself this isn't her and this would all be worth it. She didn't want me to make any baby decisions. No name, no work on the nursery, nothing.

One month before she delivered, she yelled how f#$%^ng useless I am and how I don't do anything, and that she's staying with her mother. She didn't let me get her anything, come check on her, and threatened to divorce me and get a restraining order if I even called her.

A couple of weeks back, I found out about the birth of my son from a Facebook post. She posted it with her mother and some family. It f$&#ing broke me. I tried to go to the hospital and visit. They had security kick me out.

After months of outright hatred, anger, and abuse thrown at me 24/7, I f#%^ing had it. Odds are I'm not even on the birth certificate. I opened a new account and all my deposits go there. I took half out of our joint account. She never bought baby stuff ahead of time; who knows what that money was going towards, so now that she has to buy supplies for our son, she's used up every cent.

I've gotten a lawyer. The house is mine, I'm the only one who spent money on it in any way. I've sent the rest of her stuff to her mother's house. I'm demanding a paternity test. I'm not spending another damn cent until I get verification it's my son.

I'm absolutely divorcing her. She chose the stay-at-home life; if she cheated, she's screwed. Her mother has money for a couple weeks' stay, not even close to enough for full-time support. If he is my son, I will absolutely be getting my rights as a father for a relationship.

Last week, my STBX called. She was practically hyperventilating. She wanted to come home. She was crying about how it was all a mistake. She's not staying with her mother. She's at a friend's house.

She wants to come home. She wants our son to have his father. I told her I don't f&%#ing believe he is my son. Why the f#*k would she pull this sh%t if he is? Show me a paternity test, and I'll do everything I can for him, and him only.

She wants to meet tomorrow at a park so I can talk to her. I said sure, so I can finally say everything I should have said months ago to her face. My parents are hoping we can make up, but they absolutely understand if I won't. My brother is a deadbeat so I don't care what he has to say, but my sister thinks I should at least hear her out.

OP responed to some comments:

Fantastic_Praline243 says:

NTA, but please meet her in a public place, preferably with security cameras. Do not meet her alone.

OP responded:

Noted. I've decided that sometime in the next 24 hours we will meet at a public park with my sister recording the conversation. My wife has agreed to this.

SubstantialYouth9106 says:

NTA! HECK NO! Do not meet her at the park tomorrow. If she wants to meet you then it can be at your lawyer's office with your representative present and a conversation recorded. If the child is yours after an immediate paternity test, make sure your name is on the certificate and that you file for equal custody and have an equal say in all decisions of the child’s life.

I would even ask to communicate via a parenting app. Save all forms of communication from her via text and email so you have a paper trail. No phone calls. I am very sorry that you had to go through this and your experience becoming a father, if the child is yours, was ruined. You realize your worth and you do not want to be with a partner like this.

Please protect yourself. I hope you have cameras around your property, a ring camera by the door, and that you claim she abandoned your space. Your parents need to be on your side and follow your lead. The relationship is not healthy anymore and now that a child is involved you should be putting the child first and not raising it in a potentially toxic environment.

OP responded:

As far as my parents, they love her and believe she had some mental break during the pregnancy. However, when they found out about the facebook post, my Dad was heartbroken and my mother was utterly livid. They want me to have a happy family, but they are also pissed at her on my behalf. They'll support whatever I decide.

Petentro says:

NTA she's f^&@$ng nuts. Sounds like she cheated and the grass wasn't actually greener on the other side so she wants to come back. Out of curiosity you just let her be a stay at home wife before you had a kid? Is that normal or common?

OP says:

To me it was normal. I made enough to support both of us. We planned on having several kids. She wanted to start a business where she worked from home. It all made sense at the time.

OP provided an update:

Before I ended up chatting with her, I opened up to my parents and sister about what was happening in detail. My parents were flustered at me hiding the more unsavory details, to say the least, and are probably going to be checking up on me daily for the rest of the year to make sure I'm okay.

My sister would probably have to be held back from her, so I had to get a friend to help with the chat since my sister would not be able to contain herself. So basically, within hours of the story going into the digital stratosphere, I called my wife back as quickly as I could to finally sit down and talk.

We chose a local park this morning, and I had a friend of mine record the conversation from beginning to end. I was basically ready to hear the generic affair story and get out of dodge. But of course, it got complicated.

We met at a section with picnic tables and picked one as far away from other people as possible to avoid them getting wrapped up in any awkwardness. She looked terrible. Haggard, stressed, and thankfully without the baby. She tried to have the big emotional chat and whatnot. I wasn't tearing up or acting like the hardened bada%@. I frankly just wanted to figure out what this was all for.

I didn't even get to ask the question before the floodgates spilled. I'm going to attempt to relay this story as best as I can because even looking back on the recording, it's a mess, but also, it's because I don't 100% believe it, so fair warning, it could all be fake.

This all started with her mother. As I said before, my wife's father was absent. He started off well, having two sons with her mother before her. When her mother got pregnant with her, her father went from being the picture-perfect guy he was at first to slowly changing into a negligent, abusive, unfaithful, and unsupportive jacka$#, ending with him disappearing when her mother was delivering.

He's been in and out of prison since. No one knows why he did it. The impression her mother always gave was of a strong, resilient woman who withstood anything life threw at her and did anything for her kids. She has claimed to be in therapy for years.

In reality, she has managed to conceal a deep hatred for men outside of her sons, but according to my wife, there was favoritism towards her. My wife also found out she stopped therapy almost a decade ago but never told anyone.

Her mother seemed to always have some slight against me, and now I know why. She was never hostile, but certainly wasn't warm to me, and hearing about her secret hatred, I kinda knew where this was going. Roughly about half a year before she got pregnant, my MIL slowly began sowing seeds of doubt and bitterness into my wife. Apparently, she had a full mental break.

She told her about me staying late at work possibly hiding an affair or that myself providing the majority of the income was setting her up for a hard divorce. Everything my MIL's husband did to her, she convinced my wife I would do to her, and she pumped this poison into her for months. My wife always idolized her mother, and compounding that with the anxiety she's suffered from for years, she dove in deep.

As soon as she got pregnant, like on the dot, she fell into a mental hole within days. And that's when her mother got hold of her again. Hearing about her pregnancy apparently triggered something fierce in my MIL and it spiraled from there. She had my wife fully convinced it was happening again.

Every single thing my wife did to hurt me was at the behest of my MIL. Combined with pregnancy hormones, an undiagnosed mental illness she claims to have (no confirmation), and stress, she completely lost her mind. She 100% believed I would bail, so she was punishing me first, culminating in her moving in with her mother and leaving me out of the birth.

While I was sending the papers and starting the divorce proceedings, she kicked into full-blown postpartum depression. And when her mother finally got her, when she finally beat me, which I guess was her victory over her ex (did I mention she's f^%$ing crazy?), she had no more use for my wife.

The family involved in the birth included my MIL's sister and my wife's brothers. While my MIL and her sister knew what was going on, my BILs got fed the BS narrative my MIL spun. When my MIL was done with her plan, the entire facade came down and my BILs found out everything upon questioning my wife. They were horrified.

Needless to say, postpartum, facing a very grueling divorce on her side, no longer welcome in our home, and having done everything to alienate me from my son at the behest of a broken lunatic, reality hit her like a truck.

She torched her entire life because her mother is a broken shell of a human who used her to enact her own sense of justice. The very mother who washed her hands of her after she got what she wanted. Or at least this is the story she gave me.

Frankly, there are many holes in her story. The starting point of the pattern of abuse, the claims of who was involved in the delivery, me being absent from appointments, the friend (who she confirmed is female) she's staying with, and of course, my alleged son's paternity.

It seems way too f%*&ing crazy to be made up. Who the hell would go to the effort to make this up facing what she's facing? As soon as she finished, she said she's setting up a paternity test and gave me the info I need.

With any luck, it should be done in roughly a week or so once I do my part. She gave the most sincere apologies any human being has ever given. She's begged for another chance. I was frankly too stunned to say anything, so she left and promised to call soon.

I don't think I can give her another chance. I don't think I can ever risk anything like this again. God, I'm still hoping she's just being a cheating psycho and spinning a sympathy story to try and throw me off because this got way too complicated

What do you think?