My Husband Let His Mother Bully Me For A Year Over Infertility While Hiding His Own Results. So, I Read His Sperm Count Out Loud At A Family Dinner. Was I Wrong To Expose Him?

Breaking Free

The Demand

That night when Rick got home from work, I told him I wanted to separate and I was going to start looking at apartments. His face went white and he actually started crying, saying he’d do anything to fix this and he couldn’t lose me. I watched him cry and felt nothing except tired.

I told him he could start by calling his mother right now with me listening and telling her the complete truth about whose fertility problems were worse. He stopped crying and looked at me, then looked at his phone, then back at me. The hesitation lasted maybe five seconds but it was enough. He asked if we could wait until tomorrow when his mother wasn’t busy. Said she’d take it better if he called at the right time.

I told him his mother was never busy at 7:00 p.m on a Thursday and he knew it. He picked up his phone and put it down twice before finally admitting he wasn’t ready yet, that he needed time to figure out how to explain it properly. I went to our bedroom and started looking up apartments on my laptop while Rick paced in the hallway asking me to please just give him one more day.

I ignored him and bookmarked three places that looked affordable on my salary alone. Rick finally came in and sat on the bed next to me, took a deep breath, and picked up his phone. He dialed his mother and put it on speaker so I could hear. Diane answered cheerfully asking what was wrong because Rick never called on weeknights.

Rick stumbled through an explanation that he needed to correct something about the fertility results, that his issues were actually more severe than mine, that he’d lied because he was ashamed. The line went completely silent for so long I thought the call had dropped. Then Diane asked in a strange flat voice if this meant the prayer circle had been praying for the wrong person all along. Rick said yes and apologized. Diane said she needed to go and hung up without saying goodbye.

Rick set his phone down and looked at me like he expected praise for finally doing the bare minimum of telling the truth. He said that was really hard for him and asked if I felt better now. I stared at him not believing he actually thought he deserved credit for admitting he’d lied after getting caught. I told him I was still moving out and he immediately switched from sad to angry saying I’d never plan to forgive him anyway and this whole thing was just me punishing him.

He said he’d done what I asked and it still wasn’t enough, that nothing would ever be enough for me. I closed my laptop and told him I was going to stay at Libby’s again because I couldn’t be in the same room with him right now.

The New Apartment

The next morning Viviana texted asking if I wanted help looking at apartments and I said yes. We met for coffee first and she told me Aaron was furious with Rick for how he was handling everything. She said the family was splitting into camps. Some people thought I should forgive Rick for the sake of the marriage because everyone makes mistakes, but others thought Rick needed to face real consequences or he’d never actually change. Viviana said she was in the consequences camp and so was Aaron.

We spent the afternoon driving around looking at places I’d found online. Most of them were depressing or too expensive, but the last one was a small one-bedroom on the second floor of an older building with hardwood floors and big windows. The landlord met us there and showed me around. It was tiny but clean and the rent was something I could handle on my own salary without touching any joint accounts.

I filled out the application right there and the landlord called my employer to verify my job. He approved me on the spot and I wrote a check for the deposit and first month’s rent. Signing the lease felt terrifying and liberating at the same time, like I was finally taking control of my own life again instead of letting Rick control it for me. Viviana hugged me in the parking lot and said she was proud of me. I cried a little but they were good tears. Relief tears, the kind that come when you finally stop fighting against something you know is right.

When I got back to Libby’s apartment I texted Rick that I’d found a place and signed a lease. My phone rang immediately but I didn’t answer. He called four more times and I finally picked up. He was yelling before I even said hello, saying I couldn’t just sign a lease without discussing it with him first, that he could contest it somehow, that I was abandoning our marriage vows.

I waited for him to run out of steam and then reminded him that he abandoned our marriage when he lied to everyone we know and let his mother abuse me for a year. He said that wasn’t the same thing and I was being dramatic. I hung up and turned my phone off.

Narcissistic Patterns

My therapy appointment was the next day and I told my therapist everything that had happened with the apartment and Rick’s reaction. She pulled out a book and showed me a chapter about narcissistic personality patterns. She said Rick’s behavior fit several of the traits, particularly the need to be seen as perfect and the willingness to sacrifice anyone including his spouse to maintain that image.

She explained that people with these traits often can’t handle being wrong or flawed because their entire sense of self depends on being admired. She said Rick probably wasn’t going to suddenly become the person I thought I married because that person never actually existed. It was just a performance Rick put on when it suited his needs.

Understanding that helped something click into place in my brain. I could stop hoping he’d wake up and fix himself because he didn’t think anything about himself needed fixing. The problem in his mind would always be everyone else’s reaction to his behavior, never the behavior itself.