Aw, damn, I was going to tell you that you don’t represent yourself here as someone with a sense of humour, but I will pass on that now and say, my deepest sympathy on losing your buddy. 
Rubystreak, you’re OK from where I’m sitting (which is either a recommendation or one fuck of a wake-up call, according to your opinion of me 
).
As to the dog, I’m sending my sympathies… but if the poor thing went peacefully and spared you both a traumatic last trip to the vet, there’s a tiny silver lining there.
–Mal, co-owner of one dog and three cats.
I’m so sorry about your dog. (I actually like the not-unlikeable bitch - been known to be one myself - I’m also like guys with a streak of asshole in their personality. But you didn’t seem to realize it, and that’s sort of like "do I say something about her skirt being tucked up in her nylons, or not.)
I’m so sorry about your puppy. I’d been honestly startled by the aggressiveness of your reaction earlier in the thread, but stress does that to me, too, so it makes sense.
My dog died when I was in college, in a similar way. She was more mine than anyone else’s, so my parents let me make the call, and she died in the night before we could take her to be put down. I got to thinking maybe she was waiting for me to be ready, and then once she knew it was, she was okay to go in her own way. I don’t know if dogs are capable of that kind of thought, but thinking it really made me feel better about not being there.
Rest up and I hope you feel better soon. 
I’m very sorry to hear about your dog My dog’s nearing death’s door, and everyday I have the worry of that reality.
(wrong forum)
Lewis Carroll’s Alice was told by another character, “There’s nothing like eating hay for a headache.”
Alice called BS, eating hay won’t help a headache.
“I didn’t say it would help, I just said there’s nothing like it.” 
Still a good gag, after all these years, even poorly quoted.
Rest in peace, Rubystreak’s dog. It’s never easy.
I thought I had a reasonable grasp of conception and general physiology.
That’s until I learned today about uterine didelphys–in which women can have a split or duplicated uterus, cervix, and vagina.
I just… I don’t know what to say.
(Sorry to hear about doggie, Rubystreak.)
My mistake was trusting a woman who said she was looking after contraception but then rather blithley told me after our child was conceived that she’d just not bothered about it on “several occasions” :dubious: If I wasn’t happy with the thoughts of being a Daddy, I would have been a bit more zinged.
I knew it! There IS such a thing.
Thank you for sharing that and letting me know that at least one other man on the planet finds that problem.
I think this goes to the heart of what I was trying to say, badly, of course. Some women take enormous liberties with conception, making unilateral decisions like this, sometimes even mischaracterizing their birth control decisions, or not making any and telling the guy not to worry about it. Why would a man allow himself to be put in a situation like that?
I’d be terribly angry if I was in the situation you describe, Pushkin, whether I was OK with being a dad or not. It’s a betrayal of trust if you believe someone is taking an agreed upon course of action to avoid conception but really they aren’t, or if they say they can’t conceive and you believe them, and they do. And it doesn’t matter to the family court if you were deceived or misled-- you still have to pay 17% of your salary + lots of extras if she gets pregnant, for 21 years. That’s a huge, huge commitment to have made for you by someone else’s deception.
That’s why I think a male pill would even the playing field. Then you, as a man, wouldn’t ever have to be in a position where you’d have to trust someone whose agenda might be different from yours, without you knowing it. I have never relied on a man to prevent conception, not once. Why are men so blithe about trusting women? Unless you see her take that pill every day, or you are married or in a LTR where you were OK with being a family, why take that risk? Maybe a man can explain it to me.
Not offering excuses for myself, but I lost my virginity to my daughter’s mum and just kept on letting her take the lead. She used a diaphragm and at the start I used to really feel around for evidence of it. But unless its not in properly, casual touching (as if there is such a thing in sex!) doesn’t reveal it so as time passed I didn’t check as much.
It was confusing at first though, because she did have an accidental pregnancy at 18/19 and then a deliberate one some years later to a man who didn’t love her as much back (had her over to an abortion clinic in England where she only backed out at the last minute.)
I can’t feel angry about it though, I really convinced myself sometime ago I would be childless forever so my little Rosa is too much of a gem to be down about.
Your attitude towards Rosa is wonderful and commendable. The problem is, not all men react with the grace that you have in the same situation. The resentment is then felt by the child, which is just miserable, and often divides the parents permanently and with great umbrage. Then I look at the parents, each who was irresponsible in a different way, and I just go, WTF? And I get angry at them and feel so bad for the kid. Hence this thread.
Or he could have taken some control himself and worn a condom. Yeah, its not quite as effective, but guys have to take control of their reproduction too. And so far that’s the best we’ve got. You don’t want kids? Wear a rubber.
That’s the part where I think a lot of guys get pretty dumb. Yeah, I know, guys don’t like wearing rubbers. Too bad. Being a father when you don’t want to be one or getting a nasty, possibly permanent disease isn’t great, either. If you want to have sex, you have to man up to the realities of it.
It’s too bad it’s the best we’ve got so far for men exclusively, which is why I was wishing for a Pill for men. Condoms are not that reliable-- all sorts of mishaps can occur with them. They are far from foolproof, and lots of fools are having sex, compared to the Pill or IUD.
If you’re in a LTR with someone and both have been tested and found disease-free, trusting your partner to take her birth control Pill or put in her diagram is not unreasonable… is it? If that is the decision made by both partners, one would expect, in good faith, that she would do so. Obviously, if she doesn’t want to, and wants a baby, she should discuss it with her partner, not decide by fiat that now is the time for a baby.
I’m not trying to make excuses for irresponsible men, lest someone accuse me of that. I would feel very vulnerable if I was a man, trusting someone else to take charge of that aspect of my life, no matter how LT the R was. I’m surprised so many men are willing to do it. Kind of shocked, really.
Both parties could say the same about STDs as well. In a LTR both parties are also (hopefully) trusting that their significant other isn’t getting any on the side. I was going to add the caveat that an STD isn’t an 18yr comittment, but on second thought some of them are longer than that. Trust, sex, and riding bareback are tricky things.
Heh, it depends on how you define reasonable.
We’ve all heard the scare-tactic stat targeting women, about how 1 in 4 women have been raped. The scare-tactic stat targeting men is that 1 in 4 children are being raised by a guy who thinks he’s the biological father, but in reality he isn’t.
I put roughly the same amount of stock in boths stats: none. But it does illustrate the fundamental fear that men have when it comes to trusting women when it comes to sex.