Come down to it, people have to live their own lives, according to what they think and believe. And this friend thinks this is the right thing for him, and believes this is his future. Would you really stand, if you could, in the way of another adult and his future, because of your fears?
He has a Mama, you’re not it, and he’s already raised up. I’m standing by; stay out of your friends life choices. They are his to make - not yours!
I think there was an episode of Little House on the Prairie about this, except the guy really did love the girl (who had been raped). The guy’s parents weren’t too keen though - they thought their son would basically be throwing his life away.
The situation is, on it’s face, fairly absurd.
Choosing between the soap opera possibility that she was raped, kept it completely secret from her long distance SO, decided to carry the child to term, and then only tell him just before the child is born vs the mundane probability she simply had an affair in the context of this sporadic contact long distance relationship, got pregnant, and whatever she had working with the bio-dad fell apart, and now he wants nothing to do with the child so now she needs a baby daddy is not a brain teaser.
Assuming your friend is not genuinely simple minded I would guess he understands this on some level and is cooperating with her fig leaf version of events because he loves her, and to be frank it is a highly attractive role for many men to be a white knight who can step in and help make everything better.
On the other hand, if his world is going to be genuinely busted up if he discovers there was an affair and also a non-rapist baby daddy in the picture you need to stop him because the probability of both those things is very high. If he is OK with it being an affair that produced a baby he will claim responsibility for, then let him go.
The central key in all this is what his expectations are.
There are definitely people out there who lie about being raped, but there are also many genuine cases of rape - probably more than most people realize, since it’s so rarely reported to police. I don’t think there is any way you can raise questions about if she truly was raped without looking like a jerk.
As for the issue of this guy rushing to move now, well, it is plausible to me that a crisis would inspire someone to finally take the leap. My fiance and I were long-distance for a while. When my mom died, he quit a pretty good job and moved to be with me pretty quickly because he felt that it was important to be around for me. He knew that losing my mom was a huge blow to me and he wanted to be around to help me.
Likewise, I could definitely picture a scenario in which finding out that the woman you loved was raped and is now trying to raise a baby alone would be motivation to try to rush to move down there to help her. Wouldn’t you want to be there for a woman you loved, if you really believed she had been raped?
The part about her waiting to tell him about the baby until the very end of the pregnancy is the one thing about this story that seems strange. However, I can imagine explanations for why that might be. Maybe she was afraid of how he would react and kept putting it off because she didn’t think she could deal with it if he’d freak out over it. Maybe she was ambivalent about continuing the pregnancy and waited until she was sure that she wasn’t going to have an abortion to tell him. Maybe she was in very strong denial about the pregnancy for the first 8 months.
I guess my view is that it’s certainly possible your friend is making a big mistake, but it’s also possible things really are as they seem. I don’t think there’s anything you can say to stop him from doing what he wants. Just try to be supportive if he does realize it was a bad idea.
I think I understand what you’re trying to say. I do think it’s an odd point of view. If I’m understanding you correctly, you think that because she said “he forced himself on me” instead of “he raped me,” then she wasn’t really raped? Even though you acknowledge that “he forced himself on me” means essentially the same thing as “he raped me?” But because she didn’t choose the word “rape,” she’s a big fat lying liar? Gee, that makes perfect sense. :dubious:
I can tell you this, coming out and saying the words “he raped me” can be difficult. I was raped 15 years ago, and when I told my therapist about it just last month, getting the words out was hard. Couching it in softer terms like “he forced himself on me” might have been easier for her.
I can think of a perfectly reasonable explanation for why she didn’t tell him sooner: Traumatized people do not always behave rationally.
Anyway, I don’t know her, I don’t know if she’s lying about being raped, but neither do any of you. We don’t have any information about her character other than her boyfriend, who’s known her for two or three years, evidently believes her and wishes to support her and the child, which I consider evidence that she’s not lying, personally.
I think it’s shitty as fuck to automatically assume she’s a cheating whore when there’s no actual reason to think that. Why is it so out there to believe her story? I’m so sick and tired of all the cynicism.
There are a surprising number of highly gullible people in this thread.
I’d bet every dollar I’ll make the rest of my life that
this woman is lying about being raped
this will end pretty badly.
Street smarts, people. They have a function.
And yet it is established that every year in the US over 15,000 women decide to carry a pregnancy resulting from rape to term, among them almost 12,000 never reported the crime and over 4,000 of them either didn’t know or refused to accept that they were pregnant until into the third trimester. In each case these numbers are almost certainly low estimates as the situation may exist for many thousands more that remain unknown forever.
So, in the US there are more than 10 women per day, every day, in exactly the situation claimed by the OP’s friend. You could lose your ass in Vegas betting with street smarts like those.
Not knowing anything else at all about the woman, her circumstances, or even if the OP’s description of his friends description of the woman’s description of events accurately describes what we think we do know, there is no reason to automatically doubt it. It is sheer speculation as we have almost no real information.
Because it’s massively traumatic for her? I grew up with a dad that could be called abusive, by most definitions of abuse. I usually refer to it as neglect, since it’s easier for me to stomach and work with that way. You probably have stuff in your history that you prefer to minimize when talking to other people, even when they’re completely trusted and on your side. Not wanting to use the word rape is pretty much par for the course.
The situation sounds tricky. She might be lying, she might not. I’d advise proceeding more slowly than your friend is, but it’s his choice. Immigration matters are likely to slow things down for him anyway. Hope it works out well for everyone involved.
This is so gullible I’m not even sure I should respond, but…
did you miss the part where she didn’t reveal the rape until she was 8 months pregnant?
Dude, there are only 3 explanations for that, and none of them look good for our hero.
She’s a lying, goldigging, cheating bucket-o-trouble. This is, IMHO, about 98% likely.
She’s fairly mentally ill.
She doesn’t trust her fiancee enough to tell him she was raped until she is 8 months pregnant.
NONE of those look good for the fiancee. NONE. Like I have said repeatedly, I would advise this fellow to “RUN, baby, RUN! Run FAST and FAR!”
Like I said, street smarts. You have statistics, I have knowledge of HUMAN NATURE.
Good luck with that.
You obviously don’t have much knowledge regarding human psychology. Look up posttraumatic stress disorder and avoidance behavior and quit talking out of your ass. And if you would seriously “run fast and far” from someone you love who was raped and developed PTSD, damn, that’s fucking harsh.
I think the general point is that .. yeah it’s entirely possible it went down the way the friends long distance girlfriend is relaying, but given the overall weirdness of not saying “boo” to your purported long distance SO (who appears to be super supportive to boot) until the baby is a few weeks away vs the probability it was a failed affair/relationship with an on site baby daddy - I think it’s a lot more probable it was a failed affair, and if the OP friend has no issue with that let him go for it.
The problem is if the friend is really, genuinely invested in the scenario of believing that this child is the product of rape, and that turns out not to be the case the poo is going to hit the fan in a traumatic way.
So yes it’s possible. Probable… not so much.
Some people suggest he should RUN!
On the contrary, I say he should stay right where he is.
This might sound a bit insensitive, but it is amazing how many hoops some guys are willing to jump through just to get some pussy.
And I am including myself in that category 
Can’t be all that much knowledge, if those are the only three possible explanations you can come up with.
I don’t find it particularly surprising that she waited so long to tell her long distance boyfriend about her pregnancy. She was probably worried that he was going to dump her. Lets face it, most men, on being told that their girlfriend who lives in another country is pregnant with another man’s baby would be updating their Facebook status inside of a week. If this was all a nefarious plot on her behalf to swindle the guy out of his vast Canadian fortune, she sure as hell didn’t pick the safest bet on getting him to move south and hitch himself to her wagon.
The possibility that she had a failed affair, and the Canadian boyfriend was Plan B after that relationship fell apart is plausible, but not, I think, any more compelling than the idea that he didn’t tell him because she was afraid of losing him.
Let’s not ignore the possibility that the story, whatever it is, has not been shared with the OP, instead this slapped together silliness, because they a) don’t think the specific details are anyone’s business but their own. b) especially won’t share the truth with OP as they know he’s the type want to tell a friend how to live his life. I’m going with the latter.
See, here’s the thing…you and I are saying the same thing, but I’m the one that gets abused.
It amazes me how little compassion there is for the fiance. He is clearly a dupe of the first water, and, even if he has the luck to escape this relationship situation, is almost certainly going to get into a relationship with yet another scam artist. Why? Because the dude has NO common sense when it comes to women.
I utterly disagree. I think the chances are very high he (the fiance) understands perfectly what the real world probabilities are in this situation, and he is still scrambling to help her. The context of a woman in distress who you care about will flatten the landscape considerably for a man and make you focus in the big picture.
The actual problem largely lies in the future and is unknowable. If he plans to set up housekeeping with his girlfriend and be “dad” for the kid and bio-dad is still floating around, and bio-dad changes his mind about being involved in the kid’s life things could get messy, but all we know is the part of story he’s telling the OP and he might have clarity on this already.
Not the case. If, (and it’s a big if), you’re right and she’s a harpy, then he’s going to learn a painful life lesson. He’s a grown man, and it’s his life, not yours.
Possibly because busybody, know everything’s, have been telling him how to avoid experiences/ life lessons, from which common sense springs.
If it’s true he has none, then there is no time like the present, for him to take a lesson.
So why did he take a “test”?
And what crime is he on the hook for?