Protecting Your Marriage While Dealing With Infertility
Dec 16, 2009
By Melanie Howard, Pathways Professional CounselorEditor’s note: This is a follow up to the October/November LifePrints article, “How to Support a Loved One Through Infertility.” Click here to read that article.
Zach and Liz were exhausted.
Thousands of dollars and endless months spent trying to have a child were taking their toll. Although they had a great network of friends and family supporting them, the isolation of being the only“childless”couple was overwhelming at times.
Thousands of dollars and endless months spent trying to have a child were taking their toll. Although they had a great network of friends and family supporting them, the isolation of being the only“childless”couple was overwhelming at times.
As Liz and Zach talked about their next step, both wondered at the stress they felt, both individually and as a couple. Liz felt she was facing the loss of a dream, the fulfillment of a core part of who she was meant to be. Zach was grieving just as deeply, but didn’t know how to share his thoughts and feelings with his wife.
For many couples, the season in their marriage before the arrival of children is often a time when marital satisfaction is high. However, for a childless couple dealing with infertility treatments, the months or years of trying to have children can turn the season of new love into a difficult rollercoaster of grief, emotions and other stressors that place a great deal of strain on their marriage.
This strain is caused by a variety of factors:
- Men and women respond differently to infertility. In general, fertility and parenting are not usually as central to a man’s identity as they are to a woman’s. The loss many women feel with infertility would be comparable to the loss a man might feel if he became permanently unable to work. For some men, the biggest loss in the infertility is not the loss of a dreamed-about child, but the loss of the happy wife he once had.
- Men and women process information differently. In general, women process information globally and are better at multi-tasking. Men process information compartmentally and are better at focusing on one subject at a time. A wife’s grief may be triggered by walking past diapers in a store or seeing a baby or pregnant woman. Husbands often have an “infertility compartment” and their grief is expressed only when that compartment is open. She may mistakenly conclude that because he processes his grief differently, he isn’t hurting or doesn’t care as much as she does.
- Infertility treatments are frequently detrimental to satisfaction with marital relations. Infertility treatments can turn one of the most private aspects of a couple’s marriage into a science lab, causing a decrease in the frequency and the couple’s level of satisfaction. This can turn marital relations into a chore and painful reminder of disappointment and failure.
- Infertility treatments are expensive. One intrauterine insemination (IUI) cycle may cost as much as $2,500 for medications and the procedure. An in-vitro fertilization (IVF) cycle may cost more than $6,000 for medicine and $6,000-10,000 for the procedures. While insurance laws vary, most health insurance plans in Alabama do not cover assisted reproductive technologies and most prescription plans cover only 80 percent of the cost of infertility medications. Some insurance plans do not cover infertility medications at all.
- Infertility treatments are time consuming. A woman who is undergoing a typical IUI cycle will usually make 6-8 trips to her reproductive endocrinologist’s office in a 28-day cycle. An IVF cycle involves even more visits. In general, the husband is only medically needed for one appointment per cycle. This can create great stress when balancing visits with work, travel and get-togethers, eliminating the spontaneity that many couples without children enjoy.
There is much hope, however. There are many ways couples can strengthen their marriages during this time:
- Pray, worship and study the Bible together.
- Keep the lines of communication open between you and your spouse.
- Set a time limit on how much you talk about infertility during a single conversation. You don’t want to exhaust each other’s ability to listen.
- Plan special dates where you agree not to discuss infertility. Focus on each other.
- Recognize that neither of you is able to provide 100 percent of the emotional support the other person needs. Consider joining an infertility support group or talking with a compassionate friend.
- Before beginning treatment, discuss the moral and ethical issues that can arise. Prayerfully seek to make informed, scriptural decisions about which treatments you would or would not consider.
- Before beginning treatment, seek to reach agreement about how to finance treatments, whether or not you will go into debt, and how much debt you will accrue.
- Discuss taking a break from treatment. Use this time to renew your commitment to your marriage.
- Take a vacation together to reconnect and enjoy your relationship.
- Have marital relations during the “infertile” part of your cycle and enjoy relating with one another without the agenda of trying to conceive.
- Agree together on when it’s time to stop treatment.
- Seek professional counseling if infertility is causing significant problems in your relationship.
For more information, contact Pathways Professional Counseling at www.pathwaysprofessional.org or 1-866-991-6864.