“OK we’ll return to that. For now I want to focus on your behavior for a minute. You mentioned two occasions where you made sole decisions on major things in your marriage without Bette’s input. In one instance you didn’t want to bother her with it because she was busy and stressed with work and in the other you thought she was just being elitist. Were there other times in your marriage when you excluded Bette or made decisions on her behalf that ended badly?”

“I think I excluded her from most everything I was doing once I got pregnant. We agreed that I would quit my job to start our family. I wanted to be as ‘together’ about it as Bette was about her work.”

“So Bette was the financial provider. You were the birth mother and you each went your separate ways to do your own thing and never the two shall meet … was that the plan?”

“That wasn’t the plan but that’s how things progressed. I had a harder time getting pregnant than we anticipated. Then we found out that after six months of trying that the sperm donor was the problem so we had to find a new donor. That quest just drove us further apart and me into a deeper depression. Then Bette took control. She prearranged for a friend of hers to be the donor without even consulting me. I rejected him at first and then I decided to do it.”

“Why did you reject him?”

“Because I didn’t know him. We’d agreed to use a donor that we both knew, plus he was African American. Bette didn’t tell me. She just said she’d found the perfect donor. She said it didn’t matter that I hadn’t met him because she knew exactly what we were looking for. She even made the appointment for him to meet me at the house to take him to the cryobank.”

“So Bette steps into your ‘domain’ and takes full control. She secures a donor and makes all the arrangements. It’s someone you don’t know, and she neglects to mention that he’s Black which I assume was an issue for you but you go ahead and take the donor to the cryobank anyway. You must have felt bullied yet you gave in to her. Why didn’t you stand up for yourself?”