LW,

You're the one who needs to back off, and not because of any feminist, pro-abortion stance.

You need to back off because a child needs two functioning parents and neither of you is ready for that great leap of responsibility. If she gets pregnant and you force the issue, no doubt Cary can count on at least one messed-up kid writing to him 18 years from now.

You've already done serious damage to your marriage, if for no other reason than you're the sane one and you did it on purpose.

If you can't lighten up and this issue is the dealbreaker you make it out to be, you need to be the gentleman and move on. Otherwise, take Cary's advice.

Damn, I rarely say that.

Your wife is under no obligation to have your baby, no matter how much you want her to. Your ring on her left hand does not make her body your property. If she did in fact lie to you about having an abortion, it was because she didn't feel comfortable or emotionally safe telling you she didn't want to continue the pregnancy. And if that's the way things stand in your marriage, you've got bigger problems than when or if you're going to become a father.

Let's say she did miscarry. We know she's depressed already. Now she probably feels guilty for being happy that she's not a mom. And her husband is accusing her of going behind his back to obtain an abortion. Why would she stay in a relationship where the only way to regain her husband's trust is to present him with her medical records?

Flip side: she had an abortion, without his knowledge or consent, and then lied about it. When confronted, she angrily denies having done any such thing. Since there's no graceful way out of the lie, she continues it, which wounds him to the core. Why would he stay in a relationship where the only way to gain peace of mind is to affirm that his wife is a liar?

I would say both parties need individual counseling, to deal with the loss of the child and the loss of trust in the relationship. But it sounds like there wasn't too much trust to begin with. Either she's telling the truth, and he doesn't trust her enough to believe her, or she's lying, because she couldn't communicate like an adult - maybe because it's hard to speak up when no one in the room is interested in what you have to say.

As someone else just noted, neither one of these two sound mature enough to be parents. A healthy income is not reason enough to start a family. And there's no compromise available - he really wants kids (right now) and she really doesn't (right now). What will have changed in a year? Two? Five?

Nobody wins here. The best-case scenario seems like divorce, with no contact afterward.

Women have the right to decide whether or not they want a child. LW, your wife has to carry the baby, and also faces serious pain and risk during childbirth. Perhaps she is just not ready. If you had to contemplate the idea of forcing an 8 lb. package out your rectum, you might think twice about it. Men need to put themselves in a woman's shoes regarding childbirth. And that's just the beginning. Your life will change forever. Don't be in such a hurry. I speak from experience, having fathered three sons and raised them to adulthood.

If you made it safe for your wife to tell you the truth, she probably would have. No one should be forced to have a child they don't want. It is inhuman.

Everyone wants bullshit psychological reasons for depression. However, much depression is a result of omega-3 deficiency. Since a fetus takes as much omega-3 from the mother as it can get, the mother becomes seriously

deficient resulting in post-partum depression. Feed the woman wild salmon three times a week (farm raised may not have omega-3 in it). She might recover from her deprssion. Double-blind experiments in Scandinavia demonstrated that pregnant women fed fish oil bore children averaging 15 IQ points higher than the women who got corn oil. This IQ increase persisted for many years. Research in Australia recently demonstrated that omega-3 supplements cured ADHD more effectively than the poisonous pharmaceuticals presntly used, with no side effects. We were able to convince (very easily) our daughter who now has a 3.5 and a one year old to take fish oil supplements during and after her two pregnancies. She never had a trace of post-partum depression and both children are significantly ahead of their peers in mental development. I realize that this is not scientific proof, but at least it did not disprove the thesis.

All of this information is readily available on the web. It takes a lot of weeding through sales pitches for supplements, but the peer-reviewed research is there in the original journal articles.

Costco and Sams have the lowest cost omega-3 supplements. They cost about two cents a capsule. Our whole extended family takes 6-8 capsules a day. I'm 72 and before I started I was losing the ability to do spatial visualization (for a scientist, even a retired one that's not good). A few months after starting I had it all back.

Study the science behind depression, but not the bullshit science sponsored by Big Pharma and their shills in the medical profession.

look in the mirror says,

"You've already done serious damage to your marriage, if for no other reason than you're the sane one and you did it on purpose."

(Did WHAT on purpose?) When one partner is "sane" and one has anxiety/depression issues, there are two hurting people. I speak from experience. The LW should try to understand his own pain as well as his wife's. His sense that things have been concealed from him is probably correct. As Cary suggests, he is a victim of his wife's internal conflicts. He should, on the one hand, mourn the fact that his marriage is not what he thought it was going to be, and on the other hand, try to understand that the problem here is his wife's inadequate response to her internal conflicts, not an intentional desire to hurt him.

The combination of anxiety and depression (given my experience) suggests suppressed issues involving family, parents, childhood, responsibility, and nurturing. LW, perhaps your wife can't become a parent because she was never taken care of as a child should be. It's too late for you to provide this nurturing, although she may have thought that you could provide it; unless and until she recognizes the issues beneath her anxiety and depression, she won't be ready to be a mother.

This said, I think that it might be premature to expect the LW to forgive (assuming that there is something to forgive). Acceptance (i.e. a non-judgmental understanding of why his wife did what she did, without any attempt to minimize one's own sense of having been used, deceived, etc.; a realization that he may not have a child with this partner, however much he wants one) is probably a more realistic goal; with time, this may become forgiveness.