We met in college through a liberal church group. Shared meals and talks about spiritual things led to a quick interest in each other. Trips to the library for homework turned into wild games of footsies under the study carrels.

I’ll skip over all the details and just say things moved quickly. Before we made love for the first time, I asked if we needed to use protection. In that time and place “protection” just meant birth control. She said no. She had stopped taking the pill a couple weeks before, but she could start again that night and it would all be fine. That didn’t quite make sense to me, but she was a pharmacy major – no kidding – so I assumed she knew what she was talking about.

I also said I would take equal responsibility if she got pregnant. She looked distant for a moment and just said “Okay.” I don’t know who or what she was thinking about, but pretty soon we were thinking about other things. For the next few weeks we lost a lot of sleep and had a lot of fun, and also enjoyed just getting to know each other.

Then one day she looked distant again. She spent the next day away with her best friend. The day after that, she came to me and said she was pregnant, she was going to get an abortion, and I had better pay for half of it.

I was stunned in so many ways. The pregnancy was the biggest thing, but the implicit accusation really stung. After a moment I said, “Didn’t I say I would take equal responsibility?” She melted then, and we talked for real. I asked about the birth control pills, and she admitted she should have known better and she had basically lied to both of us. We talked some more, and were intimate again once or twice – what was there to lose? – but the joy and fun had been replaced by sadness. The day for the procedure came, but she didn’t want me to be there. Her best friend went with her instead.

We still saw each other and spoke from time to time after that. One day I said something that made her laugh and she said “I could go for you again.” I sat with that for a moment and said, “I wish we had taken time to fall in love slowly.” She looked down and whispered, “Yeah.” I’m sure we spoke more times after that, but those are the last words I remember between us.

I’m sad for those two young lovers, but I’m not sad for the abortion she chose to have. Nor am I joyful. I’m just ... grateful. I’m grateful that there wasn’t an unwanted child forced to be raised by two unprepared people who were still building their lives. I’m grateful that the only lasting outcome of our reckless passion was two broken hearts that could hopefully heal and move on.

A follow-up note from the author:

A sad and ironic note about something that happened to me yesterday. I’ve shared the story with two close friends, both women. One responded much as you did. The other, one of my best and oldest friends, as we were exploring what happened more deeply, scolded me with some comparative suffering – belittling my pain by saying that a man can’t know what making decisions about an unwanted pregnancy is like because it’s not his body that is tied up in it.

I let her know that that inequality, the vastly disproportionate impact, is precisely what was so awful to me. For my lover and me, we each had an equal part in creating the pregnancy, but the impact was entirely on her. What stung even more was that I had done what I thought was due diligence to avoid it and she had deceived both of us by making it more likely.

My friend and I worked it out and she apologized, and we’ll be okay. Yet I think it exemplifies why men might be reluctant to share their stories. Toxic masculinity punishes men for being vulnerable, and women can be complicit in it. Whether belittling men’s pain through comparative suffering, or shaming them for being weak in any visible way, even the women closest to us can make it perilous for us to share.

I’ll be okay. I also know my friend was speaking through some of her own fears and wounds, and we will repair the rupture.