Sabotaging a wedding and embryos...while still expecting the relationship to survive?

Ok maybe this is the place I belong…

TLDR: he waited until the save the dates were out and embryos were developing to sabotage the relationship and reverse roles to hold me accountable for it while still expecting the relationship to continue. Pattern of collapse around major commitments I guess?

Met him 5 years ago, nothing over the top, just a stable, solid relationship that started very slowly. A year in and I had seen the good and the bad. Seemed like just a nice (albeit simple) guy who took a little more time in conflict resolution. He’s enthusiastically moving the relationship forward.

We meet the parents, start looking at the future, and suddenly he’s DARVOing me. I leave immediately. He follows up eventually and tells me about his attachment issues. He spirals when triggered and loses touch with reality. Eventually we try again slowly. He’s managing himself better but it’s just not for me so we end things.

He’s in and out of my life as I continue dating and life and about a year later theres a real track record of stability. He seems better. We decide to try again when I get a job nearby (he lived 50mi from me) so I move in. Things immediately get awful again and I’m on my way out but he talks to me about it and gets help from a therapist.

Then we have a great year. Get engaged, big engagement party from his family, I’m in IVF, he’s planning our honeymoon, we’ve got a wedding coming up, the save the dates are out, my dress is in the mail, and we get married at the courthouse a few months early for IVF insurance and suddenly he implodes. Says he wants a divorce and I don’t engage but I tell him I’m giving him space and I stay with my mom. But he won’t talk.

I come home and 8 weeks go by while he ignores me except to try twice demanding I acknowledge I told him I wanted a divorce and anything else I say is irrelevant or “manipulation”. Meanwhile he ignores our upcoming wedding, me taking cabs in and out of IVF surgery, our developing embryos, threatens to take me off his health insurance if I don’t let him fertilize my eggs (???), and eventually I’m forced to return my dress…then cancel all the vendors and send an email to my family.

Meanwhile he still cooks me dinners and lunches and tries to cuddle me at night. It’s confounding.

My family is horrified and I’m just stuck here banking eggs before I can sign some paperwork and leave. He seems to just be waiting for me to validate this evolving narrative that is at best an inversion of reality and at worst a complete hallucination.

I don’t know much about how attachment issues feel for a person, but I have very little sympathy right now.

Posted Mar 14, 2026, 12:16 AM UTC

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