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Sharing the Struggle

Should You or Shouldn't You?

By Ellen Speyer, MFT

There are few experiences more difficult to be challenged with than infertility. Typically, couples tend to keep their plans for family building to themselves with hopes of being able to make a well-received announcement to their family and friends. Expectations of being surrounded by thrilled and gleeful families eager to share the expectant time prompt couples to keep a secret until they have the wonderful security of a positive pregnancy. Couples plan the special moment of how they will share this news with their family often similarly to how they shared other exciting news such as how they became engaged to be married.

When couples are unsuccessful and it is not possible to share this, they often retreat with their sadness and disappointment and slowly distance from their main support of close friends and family. Often feelings of shame and failure are tied into their inability to conceive a pregnancy.

As a therapist, I often encourage couples to share their struggles in creating their family with close, trusted members of their circle. In the absence of safe, loving support, meeting once or twice with a trained professional can help a couple navigate the highly-charged emotional territory of infertility. It can relieve much of the stress that builds up inside the couple relationship as each partner tries to deal with the overwhelming sense of frustration paired with anxiety.

The emotional danger in sharing their struggle is that individuals and couples are then open to others' opinions of what their thoughts, plans or treatment should include. Well-meaning family typically respond with worn out clich豠like "just relax" or "maybe you've waited too long." The most painful response from well-meaning friends is "maybe you're not supposed to be a mother" or "this is not in the divine plan for you."

Want to see more?

• Find online support here!
• Talking About Infertility: Telling Family and Friends
• Healing the Mind, Healing the Body: An Interview With Helen Adrienne, MSW, ACSW, BCD
• Talk about it!

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