How to keep a good relationship with your partner?
“We married with simple hopes: enough to eat and children who might outlive us.” The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Infertility is usually a journey shared by two people. But let’s face the facts: of the two, the woman is usually the most affected. First, there is the fact that most of the treatments are taken by her: IUIs and IVFs both require swallowing / injecting huge amounts of hormones. These can affect your mood, and they are generally tied with heavy restrictions, like the need to avoid sports, go frequently to the hospital for scans. This can lead you to scrutinize and hate your body. Even more importantly, because the whole idea of womanhood is tied to motherhood and the biological clock is ticking, women usually suffer first in the infertility journey.
Men do care of course — when I first met Richard, he told me he had two aims in life: “Not being an accountant and having a family”. He hadn’t signed up for ejaculating in medical cups. But he was much more patient than I was about it.
This imbalance can lead to the woman to feel responsible vis-à-vis her partner if treatments don’t work, or conversely resent her partner if she feels he is not supportive enough. Then there is always the question of “who is guilty?” i.e. whose body is not functioning the way it should do. We’ve been told our infertility was mostly unexplained. Most of the time I feel responsible (because there has been infertility cases in my family). I had a couple of weeks thinking it might be Richard before the gynecologist confirmed that his spermogram was normal, so I know how the reverse feels too.
So how to make sure that infertility, by taking over your brain space, doesn’t also take over your relationship? I found the following principles to be useful:
· Allow a maximum of twenty minutes per day for how long you discuss infertility together. Past that, when an infertility-related thought crosses my mind and I’d want to share it with Richard, I’d keep myself from voicing it. Slowly I’ve had less of them.
· Spend quality time together every day. We are usually very social in the evening, so Rich and I always try to have breakfast together, which is a time of the day when I am relaxed and generally in good enough spirits.
· Say how you feel and let your partner know he can support you. Tell him if you really need him to come to the hospital with you for your next scan because you are afraid of the results.
· Discuss your respective “language of love” — speaking in each other’s language will ensure you both continue to feel loved through infertility. I’m sensitive to acts of kindness and words, and so it mattered for Richard to continue to tell me he loved me on a (really!) frequent basis.
· Also take into account your different temperaments. Rich and I are polar opposites. Rich sometimes calls me his “feisty latino” (even though I am not latino) because I am incapable of not externalizing my emotions. Because Rich is so soft-spoken, he usually stays calm when I am shouting and kicking after we receive yet again negative results. I force myself to remember that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care.
· Open up to your friends too — all the pressure to support you shouldn’t only be on your partner.
· Come up with alternative projects. Of course, planning a holiday can’t really compete with making a baby together, but even small shared aspirations count. Rich and I started learning the guitar together. We recently bought a flat together, in part because it would give us a shared project to plan together.
· Find the ability to laugh together about the silly moments. When Richard had to go for his first spermogram in France, there was a big sign that said “Wash your sex”. Richard took a picture and we laughed about it together afterwards.
· List out what you are grateful for. This could be a nice week end together or good weather at breakfast. Bring some positive thoughts in the daily conversation. Rich started a “one second a day” video project to capture the good moments.
· Enjoy the good times. In particular, infertility can mean actually having more frequent sex. Rich and I have tried to have a baby for 27 months. Even when we are doing medical procedures, we’d still have a lot of sex around my fertility window, as this can also help. If we had stayed stuck on the biological aspect of “trying to conceive”, we wouldn’t have survived. Even if at first it feels odd, I manage to block those thoughts from my mind and just enjoy it.
In developing countries, infertility is often a major threat to a couple’s survival. In a survey of 400 women with secondary infertility attending a hospital in Pakistan, more than two-thirds of the women stated that their inability to bear a child, or to produce a son, had resulted in marital difficulties, including being returned to their parents’ home (26%), the husband remarrying (38%), and threatening divorce (20%). In Africa, cases of extreme violence against wives who cannot conceive are not rare.
But in Western countries, there is good news! In a survey conducted by the nonprofit organization HealthyWomen, ~25% of women reported that infertility had a negative impact on their relationships. But ~33% of women in that same survey said their infertility struggle actually benefited their relationships with their partners.
In this survey,~75% women said their partners were very or extremely supportive while they went through infertility treatment. 90% percent of women are still with the same partner they were with when they went through infertility treatment. Those that separated said the treatments were not a major reason for the breakup. Canadian author Mavis Gallant wrote: “The mystery of what a couple is, exactly, is almost the only true mystery left to us”. If you pay sufficient attention, infertility shouldn’t take a good partnership away from you.
“First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in the baby carriage”, says the song. I always felt worse when we saw Richard’s friends with babies rather than mine, because it felt like I had under-delivered on a promise to him. Well, the happy truth is that loving relationships can survive even if the baby carriage is nowhere to be seen.
