How Infertility Affects Relationships
Welcome to this difficult, but important conversation. If you are reading this, I’m glad you are here. If you are struggling with infertility, please be gentle with yourself as you read, and if you are aiming to learn more in support of a loved one, I hope this helps you be the support they need.
As we discussed in Everything You Need to Know About Infertility and How Infertility Affects Mental Health infertility impacts people in all sorts of ways and everyone has their own journey. Some people use Assisted Reproductive Technology, some want to but can’t, and for some it’s not the right fit. Some of you reading this will end up having the child you have dreamed of, and sadly, some of you won’t.
This post will be going into more depth about the different ways struggling with fertility can impact relationships, including with partners, family, and friends. My goal is for anyone struggling with infertility to feel seen, to feel their reactions are normal, and that they make perfect sense, including feeling validated and more understanding about how this unique challenge impacts our relationships.
How infertility affects your relationship with your partner
Regardless of whether you and your partner are trying to conceive with your own bodies or are using the assistance of donor eggs/sperm or a surrogate, infertility can take a toll on this most intimate relationship. Any major stressor can negatively affect a romantic relationship, especially if people lack effective communication skills or are not in agreement with their partner about how to handle the stressor. However, there are some themes in how infertility tends to impact relationships.
Sex becomes unpleasant work, not an intimate connection
As discussed above, for couples where one partner has eggs and the other has sperm, sex can become fraught with pressure and anxiety. When this happens, sex can feel like a chore on which your future hinges. This is problematic in two ways, the loss of the benefits of sex in a relationship and the addition of added difficulty and pain.
First, sex serves important functions in a romantic relationship, including a vehicle for pleasure, quality time together, relaxing, enhancing intimacy and a sense of connection, and serving as a buffer against stress. When sex becomes stressful, the couple loses these important benefits, and for some extra salt in the wound, this happens at precisely the time the couple could really use them. Each partner can be too in their own head to feel connected to their body and their partner, both of which are necessary for pleasure and connection.
Besides the loss of important benefits, there can be the addition of difficult and painful feelings. Sex can become an exchange of pressure, anxiety, frustration, and fear. The partner with the penis may feel so much pressure and stress that they are unable to get or maintain an erection, let alone ejaculate. Both partners may be so in their heads about whether intercourse will result in a pregnancy that sex feels like unpleasant work.
Communication problems
A major stressor like infertility can really turn up the heat on places in the relationship where communication is imperfect or even challenging. Nobody and no couple is perfect at communication, but when emotions are running high it becomes even harder. Planning your response instead of fully listening, thinking you are perfectly clear when in fact you are not, making assumptions about what your partner means or understands, defensiveness, not sharing your feelings, avoiding conflict, going straight to problem solving instead of just listening and offering validation- these are all super common communication snafus that all couples have. When you are dealing with the stress of infertility, communication shortcomings like these can have more painful consequences than usual and make coping with infertility even more challenging.
Here is an example: Partner A might have a habit of not sharing when they are hurting with Partner B. This could be out of a desire to avoid conflict, because they fear they would burden Partner B and feel guilty about that, or maybe they just want to avoid their own painful feelings. They also might be withholding this information because they fear Partner B won’t be able to understand their perspective and they don’t want to risk feeling invalidated (receiving the message their feelings are wrong or don’t make sense).
This can make it appear as though Partner A is feeling okay, when in fact they are not. If Partner A then finds themselves doing this while coping with infertility, it means they have to experience the pain of infertility alone and may not get all the support they need, because Partner B is not a mindreader and thinks Partner A is doing fine. Partner A may also be making an incorrect assumption about the ways in which Partner B is hurting, saying to themselves “they don’t understand because it’s not happening in their body” or “they’ll think I have no right to feel this way because they’re the one experiencing this in their body.” Or even having the thought, “they should KNOW I’m not okay,” which can lead to anger, hurt, and resentment.
Partner B might also be feeling alone or self-conscious about their own emotional pain if it seems like Partner A is not having much of a reaction to the challenges of infertility. Each partner might feel alone and like their suffering is not seen. They might both be feeling shame about their own emotional reactions and making incorrect assumptions about how the other partner is feeling, assuming the other will never be able to understand. A simple lack of communication has festered into feeling alone, unseen, and frustrated. The partners are now experiencing a hurtful disconnect, rather than feeling connected, supporting and validating each other’s different experiences of the pain of infertility. Infertility is painful, but it is much more painful when you aren’t feeling connected with your partner in your pain.
Infertility can take over the relationship
When a couple is dealing with a stressor as big as infertility, it can feel like it is taking over the relationship. The pain and fear can feel like a heavy cloud hanging over the relationship, tracking ovulation, and navigating a minefield of daily painful reminders that you don’t yet have the child you want can make it feel like fertility is all you think or talk about. This can be especially true if pursuing IVF as the hormone injection schedule and constant appointments can feel like it completely takes your life. All of this is made more frustrating because you can’t schedule it at your convenience - it must be scheduled around the ovaries, regardless of what else is going on in your life. A downside to this, besides stress, is that it can put a couple in a rut and get them away from doing other things that are fun, relaxing, or distracting. This is important because it’s fun, relaxation, and distraction that help us to cope with stress, so when we are not doing these things, we become more vulnerable to feeling intense emotions.
How infertility affects relationships with family and friends
While the impact of infertility on a romantic partnership is obvious, less obvious are the ways in which it can interfere with family relationships and friendships. However, these relationships are important in our lives, especially if someone is pursuing parenting solo, and any disruption can have a negative impact, both on the relationship and on the person/couple struggling with infertility.
Opening up to others about infertility is hard
It can be very hard to open up about fertility struggles with loved ones for a whole host of reasons, including fearing you will break down while talking about it, not having the bandwidth to deal with follow up questions and check ins, trying to avoid your own painful feelings about it as a way to cope, and a fear of unhelpful responses. Sometimes people underestimate other people’s ability to support them and have a difficult time being vulnerable in general, preferring to keep things private. Other times, they may have been burned by people responding with judgmental or invalidating comments. Often, these invalidating comments come from a good place, but the person saying them does not realize that they are still not validating the person’s experience, such as making comments like “well there’s always adoption!” or “I know so many women in their 40’s who have children, I’m sure it will happen for you.”
Jealousy
When someone is struggling to have a child, it can be especially painful to be around loved ones who have children or are pregnant. It can also be excruciatingly difficult to respond to news of pregnancy, when you are genuinely happy for your loved one, but also painfully jealous. It’s common to feel immense guilt about feeling pain and sadness in response to such an announcement. It’s also common to feel like you have to hide your hurt feelings from your loved one. These painful conflicting feelings can lead to avoidance of loved ones who are pregnant or have small children, which can create distance, especially if your loved one has no idea you are struggling with fertility. It can also reduce access to support at the time you most need it. You are not a bad person if you are having a hard time with the positive children news of others.
Lack of support
Any of the above discussed issues can make it harder to receive support from people who care about you. There are also other common barriers to receiving support from friends and family. If you choose to keep your fertility struggle private, one downside to doing so is that your friends and family can’t support you along the way, when you most need it. Strained relationships or loved ones with poor boundaries can also make it difficult to open up and receive support. Sometimes not sharing with loved ones is the more effective choice if your loved ones will respond in invalidating or unhelpful ways.
You are not alone…
My hope in writing this article is that you feel seen in your pain and have information to share with your loved ones to help ease the impact of this challenge. If you are noticing these struggles in your relationships, whether you’re the one dealing with infertility or your loved one is, know that this is normal and you are not alone. Therapy, whether individual or family/couples, can really help.
To learn more about ways to cope with all the impacts of infertility discussed above, be sure to check out the articles on Everything You Need to Know About Infertility and ART and The Impact of Infertility on Mental Health. If you or your partner is in a larger body, there is the added challenge of being made to feel as though this is your fault - it’s not. Please read Weight and Fertility: What Does the Science Say and reach out for support with navigating this and other body image and weight stigma issues.
Get Support With Infertility Therapy in Los Angeles, CA
Well Woman Psychology can support you in the way you deserve as you navigate infertility challenges, wherever you are in your process. It can feel like one more stressful thing to figure out how to access support for yourself, but you deserve it and therapy can really help. Difficulty having a badly-wanted child is one of the most emotionally painful experiences a person can go through - don’t do it alone. Learn how to mitigate the impact of infertility on relationships, gain tools to discuss this tender topic effectively with your partner, and learn how to ask for support and set boundaries with family and friends with these steps.
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About the Author, A Los Angeles Infertility Psychologist:
Dr. Linda Baggett is a Licensed Psychologist at Well Woman Psychology, serving clients online in California, Illinois, New York, and Washington. She received her PhD in Counseling Psychology from the University of Memphis. As infertility therapist in Los Angeles and Manhattan Beach, she has niche expertise in supporting women along their journey to hopefully have a child, no matter what the end result. Specializing in women’s issues broadly, she also has expertise in relationship issues, sexuality, pregnancy loss and miscarriage, birth trauma and postpartum issues, trauma and PTSD, EMDR, and body image and size-based oppression.
Disclaimer:
This blog is for educational and informational purposes only, is not a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice, and does not constitute a client-therapist relationship.