Reddit Stories - I DEPARTED from my spouse FOLLOWING his former spouse with a severe SICKNESS

Episode Date: January 25, 2026

#redditstories #askreddit #aita #divorce #mentalhealth #relationships #support #selfcare  Summary: After discovering my spouse's emotional attachment to his former wife, who is battling a severe illness, I felt compelled to leave. Despite understanding the situation, I struggled with feelings of inadequacy and jealousy, ultimately prioritizing my own mental health and well-being over the relationship.  Tags: redditstories, askreddit, reddit, aita, tifu, divorce, relationships, emotionalhealth, selfcare, mentalwellness, support, healing, personalgrowth, boundaries, lifechanges, decisionmaking, copingstrategies, love, communication, familydynamicsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/reddit-stories--6816713/support.This episode includes AI-generated content.

I hope you enjoy this story. I departed from my spouse following his former spouse with a severe sickness requested him to conceive a child with her as her final desire, and he genuinely contemplated it. My partner, Mark, 33M, and his ex-Alice, 32F, got married eight years ago, and within four years of their marriage, they got divorced. It was a terrible one, it was dragged out for a really long time because she had unreasonable crazy demands in terms of alimony and he was not ready to fulfill them for obvious reasons. I won't get into the details but the divorce mainly happened because Kevin was too much of a workaholic

since just a couple of years into their marriage, he had realized that they were quite incompatible. And Alice was too suspicious of him all the time, she was just really insecure and accused him of cheating baselessly all the time. So the divorce was quite ugly, and after it was all finalized, they never saw each other again. They hadn't kept in touch and he had no idea what was going on in her life until last week. She just showed up at our house out of the blue. She told us that she had convinced one of their common friends from college to give her his address because there was no other way that she could contact him and this was something that she had

to talk to him about in person. I was the one who had opened the door to her and I knew who she was, so I was a little surprised. But she didn't seem surprised to see me at all. she just told me that she was really sorry to pop up like this, but she just had to talk to me and my husband about something very urgent and important. So I let her in, and I called Kevin to the room. In the beginning, he seemed very unhappy to see Alice. But then, as soon as he was seated, she wasted no time and just told us that she had been recently diagnosed with motor neuron disease,

MND, and she probably didn't have a long time to live. That shocked us all because whatever we were expecting, it was not that. And the way she just got right to the chase was kind of off-putting as well, but I had a lot of sympathy for her and so did Kevin, and we immediately started trying to comfort her. I could see that he was very distressed about this whole thing, and was probably on the verge of tears, but Alice wasn't done talking. She told us that she didn't need us to comfort her since we had actually come here to ask us to honor her last wish. Kevin told her that he was ready to do whatever she asked of her and even I was quite empathetic towards her because she was pretty young and knowing that she was not going to live for

long, it couldn't have been easy. So I figured that she probably had some reasonable last wish that we could actually fulfill but unfortunately, that's not what happened. She actually went on to tell us that she had come to us. Come to Kevin more specifically, because she really wanted to become a mother. She had been looking into IVF and anonymous honors for the past couple of months, but then, after her diagnosis, she had changed her mind. She now wanted Kevin to donate and she could carry the pregnancy to turn, and after the baby was born, they could have shared custody until she passed away, then, I would step into the mother's shoes, and the baby would be raised by me and Kevin. As soon as she suggested that, I was dumbstruck because I really thought it had to be a joke.

This was a crazy insane demand to make from your ex-husband who you haven't spoken to in years, and his wife. I thought that Kevin was going to react the same way, but to my horror, he didn't. He went quiet for a couple of minutes and then he told Ollie that he would think about it and let her know because this is a huge decision to make, and he needs to talk to me about it as well, so it's not something he can decide on his own. Alice nodded, got up, they hugged, and then she left. After she went away, I thought that now, Kevin was finally going to turn around and tell me that this was insane and there was no way that we were going to agree to this. I thought that he was going to tell me that he had just told Alice that he would think about it so he wouldn't end up breaking her heart. in disappointing her but he didn't do any such thing. He went back into his room and since he wasn't saying anything, I had to ask him if he was actually considering agreeing to this sort of thing. And he actually said yes, he told me that it didn't seem that unreasonable, and besides, it was her last wish, so it was only polite that we at least tried to fulfill it. I started freaking

out immediately, because there was no way that I could let this happen, especially given the nature of the disease. I knew that this was something that could be passed on genetically, so I didn't want that for a baby that, hypothetically, I would have to raise in the future. And that was actually the least of my concerns. There were more practical things that I was worried about that came before that as well. I tried to tell Kevin that agreeing to this arrangement would be a huge mistake, but he told me that he needed some time to think about it because he and Alice had a long history together and he couldn't just discard all of that, especially now that she was in this condition. He tried to tell me that given the fact that she had come to him and nobody else,

there was definitely something about the situation and we needed to look at it positively. So for context, I have endometriosis, which means it's a tad bit difficult for me to conceive. And I'm already 33 right now, getting older would mean that I would find it even more difficult to conceive and carry that pregnancy. Kevin and I have been together for the past three years, married for one, and we had been trying to get pregnant for the past couple of months, but then we decided to decide. decided to give it a rest because it was not working and we thought that we could try again later. That was just last month and now Alice showed up with her proposition.

So Kevin believes that this is a sign from the universe that we should give up on our pregnancy journey because it might get too difficult for me and just say yes to her last wish instead. This was his explanation of putting a positive spin on the situation and that's why he thinks that we should at least consider it. Never mind the fact that she's dealing with a terminal illness besides, there were a lot of other considerations to think about as well, and I felt like Kevin, just because he was upset about the whole situation, was becoming a little too idealistic in his way of thinking. So I told him that I was putting my foot down, there was no way that I was going to go through with this and we had a terrible

fight that day. I think it was one of the biggest fights that we have ever had, if not the biggest, and towards the evening, I just started packing my stuff after the fight and left. I was hurt beyond words, I didn't even know what to say to him because this was crazy, so I moved in with my parents for a while just so I could deal with this emotionally. At the time that I left, he had been out for a walk to clear his head, so when he came back home and found me missing, he started calling me and I picked up because I thought that he was going to apologize for being so insensitive to me, but then, he told me that I was being unreasonable and actually accused me of being insensitive to him and Alice, who was fighting for her life. This was the last

thing that she was asking of him, so we could at least consider it because that way, we would get a baby without even putting my body through the trouble of carrying a pregnancy to turn, and yet again, he told me that he felt like I was not being grateful enough for the opportunity that had been presented to me. So on the phone call, we had another fight, and he accused me of being insecure about Alice and her influence in his life even now, and that's why I was making such a huge deal about this, which was significantly more hurtful than whatever he had set up until then. For the past couple of days, we've been going back and forth on this. I haven't been able to block him because he's alternating between getting upset with me and

being mad at me or begging me, and I feel really bad for him. I can tell that he's very distraught regarding the situation with Alice, but there's not much that we can do about it. Especially not whatever she has been suggesting, it's literally insane and it's out of the question. He's been acting psychotic about this whole thing and even talk to my parents about it and they agree with me, that this is a terrible idea and it's crazy that he's even considering it right now. Things have come to a point where I'm actually considering getting a divorce because I don't

see any other way out of this. But about that, I feel kind of bad because he's in a terrible state of mind right now, and I don't think that leaving him would be the right thing to do. So I'm literally torn into two and I have no idea what to do. Wipta if I decided to file for a divorce because my husband wanted to donate so his ex can get pregnant because that's her last wish? Edit. So Kevin and Alice started dating when they were in college. They went way back and they were together for almost eight years, from the day they started dating till when they filed for divorce. Even when he and I started dating, he had told me that he was quite serious about Alice before me, and even though they hadn't spoken for years, he couldn't deny

the fact that he had had a deep connection with her. But then, they got divorced and everything ended pretty badly, so I didn't think that it was a threat to. me or my relationship with Kevin in any way. Besides, by the time I had started dating him, they had had no contact for quite some time, and he hardly ever even spoke about her unless he was talking about his college days or whatever. So I had no reason to be insecure about her or suspect anything, and that's why I wasn't on high alert when she showed up at our house. But right now, given the situation, I've started to think that maybe he never got over her

in the first place. So the things that you guys have been saying in the comments, it's not like it hasn't occurred to me, but I don't want to think the worst of him. At least not right now, when everything is already so complicated. So while I'm not denying that it's a very real possibility that he still has feelings for her and seeing her again just made it all come up to the surface once more, I'm just saying that I don't want to discuss it right now. Update 1, hi, thank you, everyone, for your kind words and support.

It's been a couple of days since I posted and I have decided. that I'm going to talk to him one last time, I'm going to try to make him sense, and if it doesn't work, then I'm going to have to speak to a lawyer and file for divorce because this is getting too much for me now. The only reason I'm giving him this one last chance is that I know that he's grieving. I know it can't be easy to know that somebody you had been connected to for eight years of your life, somebody who had a meaningful relationship with at one point of time, is soon not even going to be there. It's very difficult and he has all my sympathies right now, but that is the most that I can do for him, I can only extend my sympathies. I'm not going to give in to his whims and fancies and

allow myself to be involved in this ridiculous situation that he's getting dragged into because of Alice's last wish. In the past couple of days, he has stopped getting mad at me altogether in his text. He's only been begging me to at least consider this. He's been begging me to come back and talk to him and this morning. I replied to him saying that I was willing to come back and talk to him, but he couldn't lose his temper at me and start yelling at me the way he did earlier. Because if he did that, I was going to walk away immediately, I'm not going to tolerate any more disrespect at this point. He can't just get away with everything because he's upset. This situation has been very upsetting for me as well, but I'm not behaving the same way that he is.

Even on the first day, when I tried to argue with him, I tried to maintain my calm and deal with the situation with dignity, but he was the one who lost his temper. and started yelling like a madman. He was the one who accused me of being insecure and jealous on the phone call, and this kind of behavior is not going to fly with me anymore. I made that very clear and he apologized for his behavior and he told me that he was not thinking straight, but he would still try his very best to keep his temper under control

and not let his emotions carry him away. So at least that's a relief, and we have decided that we are going to meet at home tomorrow. Frankly speaking, I have no idea what to expect right now, because up until recently, I used to think that Kevin was a reasonable and sensible man, but seeing this side of him has made me realize that maybe I was not completely right about him, that maybe grief makes people act in ways that you never expected them to. So in all honesty, I have no idea what to expect out of tomorrow.

Maybe things will work out, maybe they won't, but at least I'll have the satisfaction of knowing that I tried my best to make it work. And that's all that matters to me right now. Update 2, hi, so I just came back. home after meeting Kevin. When I went over, he welcomed me very warmly, apologized for his behavior, and told me that he was going to try and keep things calm this time and in the beginning, I thought that maybe I had done the right thing by trying to give him a chance at least. And then, we got to talking, I explained my side of things to him. I told him that I was not ready

for this kind of situation. If I wanted a baby, I would like for the baby to be completely healthy and since MND has a chance of being carried through genes, I don't think it was a good idea for Alice to get pregnant. Besides, given her diagnosis, there's already no telling how fast or how slow the disease is going to be, and given the circumstances, it's probably not right to put her through a pregnancy and if she herself doesn't realize it,

then we can at least do her a favor by declining. And on top of that, even if we decided to humor her, even if she got pregnant, had the baby, and stuff, having shared custody would be a whole other conversation, and who knows, maybe they would end up fighting again like they did the first time and that wouldn't be good for the baby. Also, it would be a special kind of cruel for Alice to give birth to the baby, to be actively involved in the baby's life, and then leave because with this disease, we don't know when she's going to be taken away from everyone and that's a major concern, especially with a baby involved. That's all I had to say,

and in my opinion, these were all very valid points, which had nothing to do. with me being jealous or insecure of her. Of course, I didn't mention that, even apart from all of this, I was very uncomfortable with the idea of the situation, even materializing, but given whatever he had said earlier, I didn't think it would be wise for me to acknowledge that. So I just tried to reason with him using the practical side of things, and I thought that he would understand, but instead, he started bringing up irrelevant counter-arguments. He told me that all we had to do was just agreed to the situation and then, we would deal with these things as they came up. Basically, he wanted to go with the flow, but he just wanted me to agree and I'm not the kind

of person who likes going with the flow, especially with regards to things like marriage and pregnancy and whatnot. For me, this is a huge deal, and I can't take it as casually as he was. So I made that clear to him, and it was a very fundamental difference between the two of us, which I didn't think would ever be tested like this. I had always known. I had always known. that he was more of a spontaneous kind of guy, but I liked that about him and I thought that this would balance me out, but right now, I'm not so sure about that. When I disagreed with him, things started getting bad again. But at least this time, he kept his temper under control, and he tried to reason with me, even though he was visibly upset. He told me to keep all those

practical considerations aside and just think about the fact that at the end of all of this, we were going to have a baby and I wouldn't even have to put myself through the pregnancy. Somebody else was going to do it for us and, the best part was that it would be us doing that person of favor, it wouldn't even be as expensive as surrogacy. I got a bit frustrated at that point, and I just told him that it didn't matter to me that we were going to have a baby at the end of this process because I didn't want to get involved in something as complicated and weird as this in the first place. Whatever Alice was suggesting, it was not even going to be considered feasible by other people. I don't understand why he was even entertaining the idea, but it was

just weird and crazy and I didn't like it. If we really wanted a baby, I could try to get pregnant naturally, and if that didn't work, we still had IVF, surrogacy, and adoption as options. This whole thing with Alice was not even something I was considering and I could tell that he was very upset, which is why he was so bent on honoring her last wishes, but it was a terrible idea and he needed to realize that. She was being unreasonable enough, but I couldn't control that since I was not her friend or her family to be giving her advice, if I had any say in Kevin's life as his wife at all, I would advise him against it. I tried to reason with him, but he just started looking even more upset. He stayed silent for a couple of minutes and then he told me that

since I had made up my mind, we had nothing more to discuss. So that was it, and I still had a lot of things to say even after that. I just wanted to shake him and tell him that he was destroying our marriage in his own life, but I was so exhausted emotionally that I just got up and left. I came back home, cried for a while, explained the situation to my parents, and then I started looking for divorce attorneys. Because I really can't do this anymore, I've given this my own, I've tried my very best to be reasonable, to try and make and see that what he's doing is crazy, but if he doesn't want to understand that then that's on him. But I'm not obliged to be a part of this insanity and I won't be either. Update 3. Hi, sorry for being MIA for two weeks, but I had my hands full. A couple of days

after I made my last post, I fell seriously sick, but powered through it somehow and got in touch with a lawyer. We drew up the divorce papers and a couple of days later, Kevin was served. Then, a few days back, he responded with a few minor modifications, but apart from that, he was not contesting it. So it's final now, we are getting a divorce and we haven't been in touch for the past two weeks. I've been trying to be normal, I've been going to work in pretending like everything is fine, nobody apart from my parents even knows that we are separating, but deep down, I'm hurting a lot. The thing is, it's not like I don't want to share this part of my life with my friends, I want to tell people about how I feel so I can get it off my chest, but then,

this is so personal and so strange that I don't even know how to go about it. It feels embarrassing to even think about it and even by reading the comments, I've realized that this is a very personal. is a crazy situation to be in. Kevin is being ridiculous and the fact that he's ready to sacrifice our marriage over something like this, I really don't know what to think about it. I haven't spoken to my in-laws, but I'm guessing that they know because a couple of days ago, I noticed that they had removed me from all their social media accounts. It was a bit shocking because they always seemed to love me.

They would refer to me as the daughter that they never had and stuff like that, but I guess given the situation, they probably wanted to be on their son's side, even though I don't understand how they can bring themselves to agree with whatever he's doing. Anyway, it's really his loss and even though I'm still hurt, I'm trying to get myself to come to terms with it. In a couple of days, I might put out a statement on social media or something, just to let people know that we are separating now. If we were getting divorced, under other circumstances, I might have consulted him before saying anything to anyone but right now, I don't really feel the need to do that. I'm just done with him, and I can't wait for this whole

ordeal to be over. Update 4 so it's been about a week since my last update and today, I received a message from an unknown number and after opening and reading through it, I realized that it was Alice. This happened just a couple of hours ago and I'm still in shock because I can't believe that she had the audacity to actually say this to me. Hello, I'm so sorry that my last wish has caused so much trouble in your marital life. It was really not my intention to ruin somebody's marriage. Kevin told me all about it. And I feel that. And I feel that you. really bad about whatever has happened. So I want to apologize for that before I say anything else. I really truly am sorry for everything that has gone wrong. However, I also feel like

you have no right to say that I am being unreasonable. Considering the fact that you couldn't even make such a teeny tiny sacrifice for the sake of your husband and his mental well-being. You can tell that he's very distraught, even though I myself have come to terms with the fact that I'm not going to live long. So the least you could have done was play along and let him have this. Instead, you made him feel worse about himself, you gaslight him into thinking that maybe he was screwing everything up in his life when in reality, he was just trying to do something good for me. I don't know why you are so insecure and jealous. We haven't ever met before and I've never given you a reason to doubt Kevin, and yet, this is the kind of attitude that you had. It's just

appalling, I thought that as a woman you would be able to understand me, but I was clearly wrong. You're too selfish to think about anybody but yourself and that's why your marriage is in shambles right now. I hate to say it, but Kevin deserves better. I hope you take a lesson from this and try to broaden your way of thinking. Anyway, I've said whatever I had to say, I just wish that you would have chosen to be kinder, but that ship has sailed now. Goodbye, have a nice life. This is the message that she sent me and halfway into reading it, I had half a mind to call her up and start cursing her out because I really couldn't imagine why she thought she could say this to me and get away with it. I was angry about it for quite a while and I even had a reply typed out and ready to go,

but at the last moment, I decided against it. Because it's just not worth it, it was very obvious that she had sent me this message because she wanted a reaction out of me but I was just not going to give her the satisfaction. So I read that message one last time, I cussed her out of my head and then, I just blocked her. I'm not going to waste my time and energy talking to people like that. I'm just not interested. In a couple of months, my divorce with Kevin will be finalized, and I will finally be done with all of this for good. I don't have to put in any extra effort to make anyone see my side of things. It's just not necessary. Update 5, hi, so it's been five months since my last update,

and a couple of weeks ago, my divorce came through. These past five months have been a total roller coaster of emotions. Because shortly after I announced our separation, a couple of my friends reached out to me, and I explained the whole situation to them, as ridiculous as it sounded. They were completely on my side, and even a few mutual friends decided to stop speaking to Kevin altogether because of his behavior, but that did not affect him at all. Because as far as I know, he still went on to donate, or maybe they conceived naturally, but whatever it was, two months ago, I found out that Alice was now pregnant, and even though both of them insisted online that they were not getting back together. I knew that they had been hanging out a lot more and maybe

they were just keeping up appearances because it's not going to look too good for Kevin if he just make his relationship with her official while he's still getting divorced from me. I can't lie, I was really hurt, but then, there was not much that I could do about the situation anymore. So now, I'm just focusing completely on myself. I'm trying to live better and distract myself from everything to do with him. I've even told my friends and everyone not to tell me what he's been up to, I just don't want to know. I want to move on with my life, and do better for myself and that's it.