Link: https://old.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/1ve2ope/my_28_m_close_friend_28_m_had_a_vasectomy_and_is/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/bestofredditorupdates by /u/Direct-Caterpillar77 on 2026-08-03 04:00:04+00:00.

I am not The OOP, OOP is [deleted]

My [28 M] close friend [28 M] had a vasectomy and is keeping it a secret from his wife [27 F], who is also a close friend. What do I do?

TRIGGER WARNING: Miscarriage, deception

Original Post  Nov 22, 2014

This will be long. I apologize.

I have known my friend, Kevin, and his wife, Emily, since high school, and we have stayed very close. The three of us went to different colleges, but they were all within an hour drive of each other, and we spent a lot of time together. They got together towards the end of our first year, and got married soon after graduation. They have been married around 6 years, together around 9.

After graduating, we all moved back to the metro area where we grew up, although we live about 45 minutes apart. Still, my wife and I spend a lot of time with them. She and Emily have grown to be very good friends, and often hang out together without the husbands. Kevin and I also spend quite a bit of time together without the wives, as I was always closer to him than Emily anyway.

Before getting married, Kevin and Emily had some early disagreements about children. Emily was very set on having children, and Kevin wasn't sure that he wanted any. Kevin eventually acquiesced and said he would think about it, and they didn't really discuss it again until after they got married.

Around five years ago, Emily gradually started bringing up the fact that she was ready to start trying to get pregnant. Kevin was adamantly against having children at that point and told her he wanted to wait until he was at a more stable point in his career. He was still at his first post-college job, and while he was making good money for someone his age, the job he was in generally isn't long term (think of a field like consulting, where junior-level employees typically have a 2-4 year shelf life before they're expected to move on to something else). He told her that he wanted to wait a few years, as the expectation was that she would probably stay at home for a year or two after having the baby.

During this ongoing discussion, Kevin confided in me that, while the career explanation was true, it wasn't the whole truth. He was still unsure that he actually wanted to have kids at all and wanted to put it off until he was sure that he really wanted to. He knew it was unfair to Emily not to disclose his feelings on this, but he was worried about her reaction, given how adamant she was about having children.

After much discussion, Emily agrees to wait until Kevin has a more permanent job. Around 2.5 years ago, that happened. He took a job in-house with one of his long-term clients and ended up with a small pay jump, much better benefits, a more predictable schedule with less travel, and a lot more job security.

Almost immediately after he took the new job, Emily brought up getting pregnant, and Kevin agreed to start trying. As far as I knew at the time, Kevin agreed, and Emily stopped taking birth control. Flash forward to the present, no children yet.

Up until this point, as I understand it anyway, their only attempts at conceiving have been to continue their normal activities sans birth control. Since this hasn't worked, Emily has started discussing the possibility of going to a fertility doctor to see if there are any problems. The women on her mother's side of the family (mother, grandmother, an aunt, and a cousin) have a history of having problems conceiving, although with eventual success. I'm not sure what the exact issues are, but I know that Emily's grandmother and mother were 29 before they were able to conceive, with both trying since their early 20's.

Yesterday, Kevin confided in me that before he left his previous job, he had a vasectomy without telling Emily. After picking my jaw up off the floor, I started asking him questions to figure out why the hell he would do that.

Apparently, after he began to put out feelers for a new job (a process that took about a year), Emily had brought up going ahead and getting pregnant. Kevin pushed back pretty hard to wait, and she told him that was fine. Evidently, Kevin was REALLY leaning towards not wanting children. I wasn't aware of this, since we never really talked about it after the aforementioned conversation. After he got the new job and they started 'trying' to conceive, I just figured he changed his mind and got on board.

Shortly after they once again agreed to wait, Kevin became suspicious that Emily wasn't taking her birth control. He would check her pill packs, but wasn't able to confirm one way or another if she was taking them regularly or not. According to him, Emily was acting suspiciously (not sure what the specifics were), and was initiating sex much more often than usual. There was something about her periods as well, but I don't remember the reasoning behind that discussion.

Evidently after considering the evidence available to him, he was convinced that she had stopped taking her birth control and was trying to get pregnant after they had agreed to wait. He was angry, but didn't want to confront her with evidence that could be explained away easily by her. At this point, I don't know if she was actually taking her birth control or not. He could have been right, or just paranoid.

Given his lack of trust of Emily and his increasing desire not to have children, he decided to get a vasectomy and not tell her. There was a point where he was traveling for his job (which happened often) and was going to be a few states away for about a week and a half. He traveled to this city frequently, and was somehow able to arrange to get a vasectomy done in that time. The initial trip was supposed to be 10 days, but a weekend snow storm caused his flight to be cancelled, and his employer ended up needing him to stay another few days anyway. Again, I have no idea how he was able to arrange visits to a urologist and a vasectomy, not to mention the follow up visits. I'm also unclear on how long it took him to do this.

The timing worked out to where the soreness and swelling was gone by the time he returned from the trip and, according to him, the scar is completely unnoticeable unless you shine a flashlight on the bottom of his balls and look closely. So in the past three-ish years she has never suspected anything, I guess. He always had his insurance information sent to his office, had enough spare cash socked away to cover his copay and antibiotics/pain medication, and he changed insurance when he took his new job, so there aren't any records laying around or in an online account.

So that was all well and good for a few years, but now he is in a tight spot because if Emily goes to the fertility doctor and things check out on her end, the next logical step is for him to get tested, at which point it will be obvious to the doctor that he had a vasectomy (or at least he thinks this--I don't know whether that's true or if the tests would just show him shooting blanks). He gambled on the fact that Emily's family has a history of problems conceiving, so maybe there will be issues there to place the blame on. He has no idea what to do, but guesses that he can stretch this out a year or two before he has to go get tested.

I am really struggling with this. On the one hand, Kevin is my best friend. On the other, he is being totally deceitful to Emily, one of my closest friends. I'm not judging him for not wanting kids, but this is something he should have communicated to her before now. If he had talked to me about the situation before he got the vasectomy, I would have told him that he needed to break things off with her and move on if he was sure he didn't want kids. It wouldn't be fair to her to her, and it wouldn't be fair to him if they ended up having children (by accident or design) when he didn't want to.

But that's not what happened. He's been lying to her for years. I can't tell my wife about this, because I have no doubt she will call Emily and tell her immediately. I'm trying to decide whether I should tell Emily, tell Kevin that he has to tell Emily or I will, or completely stay out of the situation. I feel bad about the entire situation and I don't want to break up their marriage or destroy one or more friendships, but I also don't want Emily to waste any more of her time when having kids is such a big deal to her. What the hell do I do?

Edit 1: Thanks for the advice everyone. I think I have decided on a course of action. I am meeting up with Kevin for drinks in an hour or so. I am going to give him an ultimatum--either he tells Emily within 3 days or I will. I am also going to tell my wife after my meeting with Kevin because I can't keep something like this from her and live with myself. I will try to get her to sit on the information as long as possible, but if she tells Emily, then I can't fault her for doing what is probably the right thing. I am going to tell Kevin that I am telling my wife as soon as I get home from meeting with him and impress upon him the strong possibility that she will tell Emily before he has a chance. This will give him an incentive to tell her sooner, rather than later. I will probably ask my wife to let me be there when she tells Emily, if she decides that she won't wait. That way we can both be there for support, and I might have a chance...

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/1ve2ope/my_28_m_close_friend_28_m_had_a_vasectomy_and_is/

Edit 1: Thanks for the advice everyone. I think I have decided on a course of action. I am meeting up with Kevin for drinks in an hour or so. I am going to give him an ultimatum--either he tells Emily within 3 days or I will. I am also going to tell my wife after my meeting with Kevin because I can't keep something like this from her and live with myself. I will try to get her to sit on the information as long as possible, but if she tells Emily, then I can't fault her for doing what is probably the right thing. I am going to tell Kevin that I am telling my wife as soon as I get home from meeting with him and impress upon him the strong possibility that she will tell Emily before he has a chance. This will give him an incentive to tell her sooner, rather than later. I will probably ask my wife to let me be there when she tells Emily, if she decides that she won't wait. That way we can both be there for support, and I might have a chance of staying friends with her after this is all over. I will post an update at some point after the shit hits the fan. Thanks again everyone!

Edit 2: Just left from talking with Kevin. I took the exact approach outlined in my first edit, and it went as well as one could hope. He was understanding and apologized for putting me in this situation. He understood my need to tell my wife and said that he wished he had taken that approach in his own marriage. He realizes he needs to tell Emily and that the marriage is likely over. After some reflection, he thinks this is probably for the best because she will never trust him again and he really doesn't want kids. He is going to sit down and talk with her tomorrow afternoon.

Edit 2.5: Just finished talking with my wife. Holy fuck I'll have one hell of an update soon. I don't have time to write it out right now because I need to go to sleep. I'm pretty drained from all of this. I'll update this sometime tomorrow. I'll either edit this thread or post a new one if it takes me longer to write. Stay tuned. If you like drama, just fucking wait. Fucking fuck. Fuck.

Edit 3: So a lot has happened since last night. Holy hell. First off, Emily isn't pregnant (as far as anyone knows), so sorry if you were hoping for that. I'll try to write what happened chronologically so it makes more sense. Here we go:

So I told my wife everything last night after I got home from meeting with Kevin. As you might expect, she was absolutely floored that he would do this to her, given how much she wants kids. She didn't take it as bad as I thought she would, though, which was weird at the time. I really thought her reaction was going to be to say that we need to tell Emily immediately, drive over to their house in a blinding rage, etc. Instead, she told me that she had something to tell me that she had been keeping a secret for a long while.

Evidently, a little over a year ago Emily and my wife were discussing Kevin and Emily's attempts at conceiving. It wasn't unusual for them to talk about this, since at that point they had been 'trying' for over a year. On this night, though, Emily had had quite a bit to drink and opened up to my wife more than usual. Emily was desperate to start going to the fertility doctor, but Kevin wanted to wait because they hadn't been trying to very long. Unless I misunderstood him, Kevin seemed to imply that Emily had only recently started suggesting going to a fertility doctor. Nope--she has been telling him she wanted to go for over a year. My wife asked her why she wanted to go so soon, since they hadn't been trying that long. Emily told her that SHE had been trying for nearly four years!

What. The. Fuck.

The following explanation of this is pieced together from my conversation with my wife, what Kevin told me, and my own inferences. I've tried as best I can to make the pieces fit together in a way that makes sense. I'll update and edit if I find out that any of the details aren't correct.

Emily stopped taking her birth control while Kevin was still at his old job, before he ever started looking for a new one. She pretended to take her pills, hoping she would get pregnant and she could blame it on the fact that birth control isn't 100% effective. [side note: my wife was absolutely floored by the revelation and does not condone her behavior, but continued listening to try and support her friend through what has been a really difficult experience.] She stopped taking her pills around 6 months before Kevin starting looking for a job. This is the same time at which she started pressuring Kevin to move on from that job--I guess it took 6 months to convince him to finally start the process.

So Kevin agrees that it's time to leave his job, starts talking with headhunters, gently approaching his current clients, etc. They have the above-mentioned talk about going ahead and trying to conceive, Kevin says no, she 'agrees' to wait. The reason she brought it up on that particular day is that she thought she might already be pregnant, given that her period was late and she had been trying for 6 months.

A couple days later, Emily got a pack of pregnancy tests, and three positive results later, she's pregnant. She's excited as hell, but wants to wait a bit to tell Kevin, given that they had just agreed to wait to have kids until he got a new job. Fuck. My wife thinks Emily was probably around 2-3 weeks along at this point.

About a week and a half later, Kevin is out of state for work, and Emily is planning to spring the news on him when he gets back. He is gone from Sunday night, and is supposed to return late on Friday.

On Monday night, Emily has a miscarriage. Evidently, this is one of the common mishaps that the women in her family are prone to. My wife told me that Emily's mother had at least 3 miscarriages before successfully carrying her first pregnancy to term. Emily is absolutely devastated. She doesn't tell Kevin about it because then he'll realize that she hasn't been taking her birth control, and shit will hit the fan. She calls my wife, who goes over to her house to comfort her [note: my wife does not know about the miscarriage at this point, just that Emily was really upset over something; Emily only told her the truth a year ago]. I actually think I remember what night this happened on because it was unusual for my wife to drive all the way to Kevin and Emily's house to hang out with her--usually they met somewhere in the middle.

So Emily is obviously upset about this, but manages to get herself together by the time Kevin gets back. She doesn't say anything about it, but immediately starts trying to conceive again. My guess is that this would be the time where Kevin becomes suspicious about her behavior. He was right that she wasn't taking her birth control, but he only realized it after she had a miscarriage and tried even harder to get pregnant again. As far as anyone know, Emily never got pregnant again between the this time and when Kevin had the vasectomy.

During a routine visit, Emily asked her OBGYN if there were any problems and told her about the miscarriage. This happened before Kevin started his new job and they officially 'agreed' to start trying to conceive. I don't know if Emily told her (him? I don't know) that she had stopped taking her birth control, or if she implied that it was accidental. The OBGYN identified something with her uterus that could possibly cause an issue, but said she couldn't be sure from a routine exam. She suggested that Emily see a fertility specialist and gave her a referral. Evidently the specialist wanted to do the first consultation with both Kevin and Emily there, so Emily couldn't start that process until Kevin was on board with conceiving.

So that's the state of things. Emily was lying to Kevin about being on birth control for at least 1.5 years. My wife never told me because she wasn't sure what to do. Since they had officially started trying to have children by the time Emily told her about all this, my wife decided to keep the information to herself because it didn't matter at that point anyway.

I called Kevin and told him about this late last night. He wasn't as upset as I thought he would be, because he already figured that Emily had stopped taking her birth control back then, although it was actually 6 months before he caught on. He was pretty upset about the miscarriage and felt really bad that Emily had to keep this to herself for all these years. As of right now, he hasn't talked to her yet. That will happen later this afternoon or tonight.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I may post an update after he talks to her tonight. In all likelihood, though, I'll wait a week or so and post an update after all this has died down and, hopefully, they have decided what they are going to do.

TL;DR - best friend got a secret vasectomy, wife really wants kids and is suggesting going to a fertility doctor, which would likely eventually lead to her finding out. I have no idea what to do with this information.

Update/Resolution Nov 24, 2014 (2 Days Later)

Well, reddit, the situation has resolved itself. Kevin and Emily talked for a long time yesterday, and they've agreed that it's best for them to split up. Too much damage done, and the lies they told each other were too big. Not to mention the kids issue. I wasn't there obviously, but I've talked to them both and they seem better than I expected. Both of them are really angry, but as much is directed as themselves as each other.

Strangely enough, they were both really glad for my involvement. Emily wasn't even pissed at my wife for telling me about the birth control fiasco.

I have no idea whether my wife and I will be able to remain friends with either of them. They were both really deceitful to each other and to us, but I think I'm willing to move past that eventually. We'll see how this goes.

Thanks to everyone who commented. I don't think I would have approached this situation correctly were it not for some of the responses I got here.

TL;DR - Friend lied to his wife about wanting kids, had a vasectomy, kept it a secret for 3 years. Wife lied to friend about waiting to have kids, stopped taking birth control for 1.5 years without telling him. They're getting a divorce.

THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT THE OOP

DO NOT CONTACT THE OOP's OR COMMENT ON LINKED POSTS, REMEMBER - RULE 7

Both sides took matters into their own hands. No trust no respect. Best to split.