A paternity test is not only a physical examination but also an emotional one. So when Reddit user ImShattered‘s boyfriend asked her to do one for their baby, the woman, as the name of her anonymous account suggests, was heartbroken.

She digested the request for a couple of days but still couldn’t figure out where it came from; the woman has been faithful to her partner throughout their relationship.

What she’s certain of, however, is that she can’t be involved with someone who doesn’t trust her. So she made a post on the subreddit r/TrueOffMyChest to pour out her disappointment, revealing her plans to cut out the man from her life.

This woman was surprised by her boyfriend’s request to paternity-test their child

Image credits: Picsea (not the actual photo)

And figured she can’t be in a relationship with so much doubt

So she decided to end it

Image credits: u/imshattered_

Trust might be the most important piece of a successful relationship. It’s the thing that allows two people to open up to one another and share their most authentic selves without fear of judgment or shame.

While it’s not entirely clear why ImShattered’s boyfriend suddenly got so suspicious, he obviously no longer believes her words or actions.

“Typically, when I talk to people who are experiencing trust issues in their relationship, there is a strong feeling of uneasiness as well as anxiety about their partner,” Liz Higgins, LMFT and founder of Millennial Life Counseling, told Elite Daily.

Even if he hasn’t explicitly noticed her lying or doing things behind his back, it seems that the man just has a feeling that something bad is going on, and it has totally taken over his brain space.

To the man’s credit, he could’ve been sneaky about it and tried to collect samples for the test without his girlfriend knowing but he chose to be upfront about it.

“Open communication will always be a relationship saver,” Higgins noted. “If you can find the bravery to confront your partner about your feelings and experience in the relationship, there is always a chance to save it.”

However, the message he sent was clear: “I don’t trust you.”

Image credits: Ousa Chea (not the actual photo)

Biomedical ethics researchers Heather Draper and Jonathan Ives think that there are few morally acceptable justifications for a man to seek a paternity test.

“We suggest that the meaning of ‘father’ has three components that may be found in the person of one father, or spread amongst different men,” they wrote in Paternity testing: a poor test of fatherhood.

“These are ‘causal father’, ‘material father’ and ‘moral father’. ‘Causal father’ refers to the man responsible for bringing a child into existence, with one such causal route being the provision of sperm in natural reproduction. ‘Material father’ refers to a man who provides materially for a child (in terms of providing physical care, or the means of providing physical care, such as food, shelter, clothing, etc.). On the other hand, a ‘moral father’ refers to a man who forms a loving parental relationship with a child. Moral fatherhood seems to be that which is valued most highly, both philosophically and by … men [themselves].”

Where it is not in the interests of the child for their genetic origins to be established (urgent medical needs might be one such justification), Draper and Ives argue that the decision to perform infidelity testing can be left for the child to make for themselves when they are sufficiently mature.

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