http://www.advicegoddess.com/ag-column-archives/2005/10/fetal-attractio.html
Fetal Attraction
Five months ago, I slept with a woman I dated for a few weeks. She said she was on the pill, so I didn't use a condom. Last week, out of the blue, she called and told me she's pregnant and is having the baby. When I asked how it could be mine, she said she lied about being on the pill because she's 36 and desperately wanted a child. I suspect she doesn't know who the father is, but hopes I'll be a good guy and "do the right thing." I'm not trying to shirk responsibility (I'm a committed father to a 4-year-old daughter I had with my ex-wife), but I caught this woman in several lies while dating her, so I can't help worrying I'm being played. What should I do?
--Parent Apparent
Surely, you've heard some of the names for a man whose only form of birth control was the word of a woman he barely knew: "Daddy," "Da-da," "My Old Man," and "The Dupe Who's Gonna Pay My Kid's Tuition To Harvard."
The mere prospect of having sex often reduces even a man of genius-level intelligence to one with all the sense of a sand flea. If only men were more frank about this tendency, they might arm themselves with wallet-sized translators like tourists use to keep from accidentally ordering fish nostril sashimi. These, however, would convert sexual fantasy phrases to reflect the likely post-sexual reality: "Hey, baby, wanna get naked and make twins?" Or, "Something tells me you're into the real phreaky stuff, like bankrolling a full set of braces and eight years of birthday clowns."
In no other arena is a swindler rewarded with a court-ordered monthly cash settlement paid to them by the person they bilked. While you don't mention being forced at gunpoint to have sex without a condom, potentially getting socked with two decades of hefty fines for being a careless idiot seems a bit like being sentenced to 100 years hard labor for stealing a muffin. The law is not on men's side. Matt Welch reported in Reason magazine (2/04) that welfare reform legislation forces some men to pay child support for kids who aren't theirs -- sometimes, kids of women they've never even met -- unless they protest, in writing, within 30 days, that they're victims of a daddy-scam.
No comments:
Post a Comment