"He Literally Thought His Paternity Leave Was A Vacation": People Reflect On When They Realized They Chose The Wrong Person To Have Kids With

I can't even begin to fathom the amount of work and selflessness it takes to raise a child. Starting a family is an incredibly exciting and wonderful thing that should be an equal responsibility for both partners. Unfortunately, it's not always seen this way by everyone.

So, I asked the members of the BuzzFeed Community to share the moments they realized they had chosen the wrong person to start a family with. Here's what all of these incredibly strong people had to say:

WARNING: This post discusses addiction, verbal abuse, child neglect, and domestic abuse.

1."For me, it was not for a few years — when my kid was about five. My husband was out of work for the fourth or fifth time, and he’d be home for months at a time 'looking for a job,' and he would only help out around the house when I asked. I was the total task master."

2."I was too naive and suffering from PTSD to realize that he was awful before it was too late. I didn't want to have a baby, but he did so badly. He managed to get me off birth control and kept my car keys so I could not get any contraception. Then, one night we were drinking and having a good time like 21- or 22-year-olds do, and he started again about wanting a family, all lovey and everything."

"I didn't explicitly say no that time, but I didn't say yes either. Long story short, I am raising a child now with no help from him or any of his family. I still wish I could go back in time and never have met him. I give 110% to being the best parent I can be, and he's lost custody of three children, including the one I gave birth to.

—boocoo512

3."The moment I had my baby and everyone had left to go home, it was just me, my husband, and the baby there. I wanted my husband to get in bed with me and just be in awe with me over the baby we made together."

4."It wasn't one moment, but many. For example, my husband was supposed to be watching our daughter play outside on our cul-de-sac, and over the course of an hour or so, a few neighbors came over. They chatted and were apparently drinking. Finally, my husband comes inside, locks the door behind him, and is inside for 5 minutes before our terrified daughter is pounding on the door in tears because 'daddy forgot her.' He had forgotten he was even watching her at all."

—Anonymous

5."When I had just given birth to our second child, he went out with his 'work friends' to celebrate her birth. He came back to the hospital pretty tipsy and fell asleep in the bedside chair. His phone went off with a text, and I was thinking it might be a family member, so I picked it up to respond. Nope, it turns out it was his female co-worker telling him how much she enjoyed their time together that evening and looked forward to the next time."

6.My water broke at 23 weeks, and I was in the hospital trying to 'hold the baby in' for as long as possible. The hospital alerted him at 26 weeks that I was having an emergency c-section or the baby would die."

"We already had a little one at home, so I didn't expect him to drive the 35 minutes to the hospital with baby #1 in tow, but he didn't even call the hospital to find out the baby had been born or how we were doing. He found out our daughter had been born and needed emergency surgery the next day when I called him. And yes, we are divorced now, and (hold your surprise), he sees the kids maybe once every couple of years. They're in high school now."

—filmteach

7."It started with simple things like not helping clean up or do the dishes. Then it progressed to letting the children run wild around the house, color on the walls, play with makeup and lipstick, and get it all over the walls of our home. The kids would look like literal clowns when I came home, and everything was chaotic and messy."

8."There were a lot of red flags that started almost immediately: being upset when I got pregnant (even though we had not been using any means of birth control for months), yelling at me for waking him up when I had a charlie horse in the middle of the night, and these are the minor examples."

"However, I knew I was in real trouble when he kept calling my maternity leave a 'paid vacation,' and that since I was going to be on this vacation for a year, he was essentially not going to be responsible for anything around the home since I would have plenty of time to look after all of it. He even went so far as to say that he would not even help on the weekends since that would be his time to rest and relax from the week since he was the one who was actually working. I tried to convince myself that he would realize how much work it is to be a new parent and that he would help in the end, but no. He stayed true to his word, and even once I went back to work full time, things didn’t really change then either."

—Anonymous

9."I spent five years with my ex before a surprise pregnancy; when my daughter was born, he continued to party, wasn’t there for my daughter, and never helped me with anything around the house. I was basically taking care of two kids. When my daughter was four months old, I was just sick of it and decided to leave the relationship. It was honestly better to be alone than with him. My daughter is now 10 years old. I got married to the most amazing man in the world, and we have another 5-year-old daughter. The hardest part is always leaving, but afterward, you feel free and amazing things happen."

10."The whole night was my red flag. First, when my water broke a week earlier than the due date, he yelled at me for not telling him our son was going to be early. At the hospital, he told me to shut up because I was talking too much (due to the hospital drugs). My contractions were in my thighs, so I said my thighs hurt, and he told me they didn’t hurt that much."

"Finally, after three hours of pushing and finally getting the baby out with forceps, my husband said, and I quote, 'that was the most disgusting thing I’ve even seen.' Fast forward three days... Baby and I are home from the hospital. He never told his boss I gave birth, and he still went on this two-week testing session in another state. He comes home and says, with a look on his face, 'I can’t look at you the same way as before you gave birth.'"

—Anonymous

11."The real light bulb moment was when he began telling people after our kid was born that I was the one who wanted a baby, as though he had no part in the pregnancy. There were a lot of red flags before, though: he didn't attend any of the prenatal appointments, was disinterested in planning the baby shower or assisting in preparations for the birth, wanted to bring his laptop to the delivery room 'in case he got bored,' and he was on the phone with someone while I was pushing out the baby, and wouldn't hang up."

12."I moved my son, my pup, and myself to my parent's house (an hour away). When I came home from my first shift back to work after my maternity leave I found my recovering alcoholic husband drinking beer while he was watching our 3-month-old son. I had so much hope that it wasn't a full loss of his years of recovery and that we could somehow mend our family relationship, knowing full well even at that point, I would not feel comfortable leaving him with our son alone."

"I was still hoping that we could carve a family out of the pieces, but it didn't happen. This once lovely, smart, beautiful man drank and drank and drank. My (our) son is seven now and in second grade. He is absolutely the kindest, most respectful, and most empathetic soul. His father passed away a year and a half ago from alcohol misuse."

—swirl5335

13."When she commented a couple of months into us trying to have a kid that 'this was going to ruin the perfect life she had built,' and I had a flash of the last 10 years and realized she hadn't built anything other than a misperception in my mind about our 'partnership.'"

14."It started before the delivery of our daughter, when I had Hyperemesis during my pregnancy. We’d had four miscarriages prior to the successful pregnancy, and my vomiting was debilitating for the first 20 weeks."

"When I would tell my husband that I was really struggling with the physical and mental toll of Hyperemesis, he said, 'I should be grateful to even be carrying the baby that long after our many miscarriages.' It only got worse from there, and when my daughter was born and I struggled with postpartum depression during COVID lockdowns, he again said I should be grateful and not complain about anything. I spiraled and eventually left him. Best decision I ever made."

—Anonymous

15."When he told me I ruined his paternity leave by asking him to help care for our newborn, he thought he deserved to sleep in and lay around doing nothing. He literally thought his paternity leave was a vacation."

16."Our daughter was 1.5 years old, and I was pregnant with our second. On the first ultrasound, I found out I miscarried. That afternoon, he flew to Las Vegas for a guy's weekend he had planned months prior. He went. He didn’t choose to cancel and stay home with me. I was alone with a toddler, dealing with one of the hardest experiences of my life up until that point. We did have one more child, and I can say I’m happily divorced from him now and married to someone who adores me and my kids."

—kimberlyhinkley

And finally, this woman shared her story about the moment she realized she had chosen the wrong person to raise a family with, and the freedom and happiness she had yet to even know:

17."I was in my third trimester pregnant with my firstborn. We were going out to eat, and I said something that he didn’t like, so instead of talking through our disagreement, he put me out of the car and left. Without eating! I had no purse or money, and this was before everyone carried water bottles or the invention of the cell phone! We lived in a Deep South state, and it was a very hot day moving into the summer season. I was a 30-minute car ride away from home; I had no clue how long it would take a very pregnant lady to walk through all the hills, twists, turns, and busy streets of the major city we lived in."

Do you want to share your experience of the moment you realized you started a family with the wrong person? Feel free to leave your stories in the comments.

Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity

If you or someone you know is in immediate danger as a result of domestic violence, call 911. For anonymous, confidential help, you can call the 24/7 National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 (SAFE) or chat with an advocate via the website.

If you are concerned that a child is experiencing or may be in danger of abuse, you can call or text the National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-422-44531-800-422-2253 (4.A.CHILD); service can be provided in over 140 languages.