It had been Mary’s dream to be a mother. She had never imagined that infertility could affect her. She had always pictured herself building a family with several children. Now, married to Peter, it was time to make that dream come true. But months after the wedding, nothing had happened. Then, after six months, they increased sexual intimacy, trying to have greater opportunities to conceive, but nothing happened.
Then, after a year, Mary and Peter began to wonder what was happening. Where was the problem? They went to their family doctor, who referred them to a specialist. After several tests, the specialist told the couple, “You will not be able to have children through natural means.”
The emotional pain that overwhelmed Mary and Peter was indescribable. They both felt low self-esteem and had feelings of inferiority, low self-confidence, and low self-love. Besides, they felt ashamed and incomplete. They felt they were not enough. They even began to question their ability to parent and maintain their relationship. It was at this point that they decided to seek professional help.
Infertility is a real thing that causes a lot of pain
Infertility is common. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines it as the failure to achieve a pregnancy after 12 months or more of regular unprotected sexual intercourse, and it estimates that about one in six people of reproductive age worldwide experience infertility in their lifetime. As Mary and Peter’s story reveals, when a couple experiences this, they feel in shock, frustrated, and there are extensive psychological effects.
The shock comes from being in a situation the couple never imagined. In addition, this shock is the result of false beliefs rooted in our culture that say that “procreation is a voluntary process,” that any person can achieve just by having frequent coital interactions. So, when this fails, the couple tends to question their identity and both members of the couple feel inferior as a man and a woman.
Infertility produces frustration, partly because the couple has to change the life plan they had outlined. For Mary and Peter, their life project was parenthood at a young age, so they could dedicate the best years of their own lives to their children. They saw parenthood as a culmination of their personal development, having children when reaching personal and professional maturity.
All of this produces great emotional pain as a loss is experienced. All losses bring sadness, anguish, pain, and sometimes trauma. These adverse circumstances force the couple to rethink their life plan and make important decisions regarding that plan: to keep trying with their means, to decide not to have children, to try assisted reproduction, or to adopt or foster a child.
How a couple experiences infertility
When a couple with infertility problems comes seeking marital therapy, we help them process this experience by approaching it as a grieving process. Infertility can be understood as a loss from an emotional and psychological point of view. The couple experiences this loss in different phases:
- The first phase, when the pregnancy does not occur when it is supposed to.
- The second one when infertility treatment cycles begin and are unsuccessful, and finally, when an eventual pregnancy culminates in a miscarriage.
These stages of grief do not necessarily occur in order, and each person might experience them in different ways. In the Paralysis stage, the individual acts “like a zombie” or like being “in a trance,” very distant from others. There is denial, the person cannot believe what happened is real and he/she says to himself/herself, “someone made a mistake.” There may be physical manifestations, such as periods of depression, loss of appetite, and poor concentration.
Yearning stage
In the yearning stage, the individual has a great need to fulfill the desire to be a parent, so, when it does not happen, it becomes more fervent every day. Everything reinforces when the person exposes to promotional materials or items for newborns. Close friends and family do not help at this stage because they tend to ask the couple if they are doing things right. They tend to not consider the pain experienced by those with infertility.
Second stage
The longest stage is Disorganization and Despair. This stage is characterized by feeling guilty. Many people think their infertility is a punishment, one sent by God for sins committed when they were young. Infertility is a medical condition, not a punishment, and you are not to blame for it. If you carry this guilt, share it with a counselor or a pastor you trust. People in this stage feel a lack of control, anxiety, loneliness, grief, and hopelessness, and couples withdraw from their friends because of the stigmas surrounding infertility.
The Reorganization stage is the one in which the individual accepts and reorganizes his/her personal life. In this stage, he/she considers a new Life Project. This period can take years, or sadly, for many people, it never happens because they give up accepting their fate. Many people experience such deep emotional damage that they think no one can help them and that there is nothing anyone can do to alleviate their suffering. But help does exist: talking with a counselor, your doctor, and people you trust can lighten the load.
You may wonder what can I do if I’m going through the same thing as Mary and Peter. What can I do to help someone in a situation like the one we discussed? Some first steps can help: grieve the loss together instead of alone, talk with your medical team about your options, and decide together, without pressure, what you want to do next, whether that means continuing to try, assisted reproduction, adoption or foster care, or living without children.
What is the hardest part of this loss for you, and who can walk through it with you?
Would you like to talk with a professional? Call (407) 559-7093 (Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern) or find professional help here. For general questions that are not an emergency, write to drduany@zodugroup.com. Please do not send health information by email.
If you are in crisis or thinking about hurting yourself, do not wait. Call or text 988 (988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, 24 hours a day, free and confidential). If there is immediate danger, call 911.
This article is for education only. It does not offer diagnosis or personal advice, does not replace evaluation or treatment by a health professional, and reading it or writing to us through this site does not create a therapeutic or pastoral counseling relationship. This site is not an emergency service and is not monitored continuously: do not send health information through comments or public forms. The author is a licensed psychotherapist and pastor, and is part of ZODU.
Sources
- World Health Organization, Infertility fact sheet.
Keep reading
FamilyWho is educating your child?
How important is the influence parents have on raising their children? Have we asked ourselves that question? The…
FamilyHow to avoid financial infidelity
Let's see some examples of financial infidelity. Santiago and Mary are the typical couple who fight tirelessly to…
FamiliaWhere We Learn to Love: Family History and Attachment in Ian and Cary’s Story
How the family we grew up in shapes how we love as adults: genograms, attachment theory and five conditions for secure…