Understanding Women's Infertility for Men

Disclaimer

Not a medical professional, not trained, just an observant guy that happened to have insight. Take this with a grain of salt.

There’ll be a lot of women who are probably sick and tired of men telling women how to feel, etc. I totally get that, and it’s not fair that women really do seem to get the raw end of everything going. We’ll dive deeper into that topic on another blog, but for this one, I wanted to talk about women’s infertility.

Recently, I had friends that have been trying for years. They’ve gone through quite a lot and ultimately arrived at IVF. Unfortunately, this was not successful either so it was a rather big (both physical and mental) burden. It’s a really sad time when this happens. To add a little “insult to injury”, me and my wife decided to try and we were successful. At the time of writing this, she’s 6 months pregnant.


This, unfortunately, put a massive rift in our friendship. Understandably so, because it’s a rather soul-destroying thing. However, I wasn’t that understanding at the start of it. Let me explain…

What was the big deal?

Some people were just not meant to have children, and some people have to try multiple times and/or multiple rounds of IVF before they get anywhere. This is the sad truth of it all. So why was there a massive rift in our friendship after we told them of our joyous news?

Well because most men are awful at empathy or relating to things (myself included)… let’s put this into an analogy (helpfully described by my wife).

Imagine you wanted to have sex with this gorgeous person. They take their clothes off, they’re sooooooo sexy… but no matter what’s happening, you cannot get an erection at all - despite the fact that you really want to have sex with them.

I totally empathise with this, after all, I never skip leg day solely because of a Mens Health article that mentioned squatting after a certain age to ensure that erections are strong… but I digress.

My wife mentioned that the context of this was: It's a woman's natural biology to be able to have children. Imagine the sadness if you couldn't have it. Or more to the analogy, imagine you couldn't have sex with anyone at all because you couldn't get an erection... no matter how much you tried, how many pills you take, how many specialists you went to go see.

As a male, virility is a massive thing. We honestly wouldn’t measure our dicks otherwise (because that’s a sign of virility). So put yourself in that situation, and you’ll understand the pain and suffering that is a fraction of what not being able to have children is like.

My take on this

I was very guilty of saying it’s a good thing that you aren’t able to have children mostly because you can save money and spend it on yourself rather than on raising kids - because they aren’t cheap - however my Asian brain always thinks about the monetary aspect rather than anything.

Let’s be real, money aspect aside it’s a biological function that you can’t do. This is what the most painful thing is. My wife said the big takehome is that it’s something that (biologically) women are supposed to be able to do. In my head, I tried relating it to “shooting blanks”, at which point I thought: I could still enjoy sex, etc. However, the analogy above is a lot more apt.

My advice to many males out there, if you know any women out there that have infertility issues: have a fuck load more empathy. Do not do what I did and say “look on the bright side, you got more time/money/etc for yourself and partner and bla bla”. Just understand that this is a very emotionally painful process for women. We will not get it because it’s not happening to us, but just remember that analogy and how awful it would feel to not be able to do something that we are biologically wired for. Do your best to be a listening ear, and keep wishing them luck.

Just try to be a lot more supportive and understanding.

As for friendship. Ours is probably damaged beyond repair. I don't expect them to ever really get over it until they have a child of their own. My wife's co-worker told her: "Until you have a child of your own, you'll never get over others having the ability to have children". I do hope at some stage they can have a child of their own. Things will never return to how it used to be, and honestly, I've accepted that there's a severed tie in our friendship. For now, just know that we wish you luck on your journey. Do not give up hope, because the journey is not over.

Sidenote - for those unable to conceive, be accepting of others who can.

Some of you may be questioning why I said it was an insult to injury that we had a child and were successful. There was a period in my life where my wife and I said we didn’t want children. We said this for many years only to decide there and then that we would try, and we were successful within a short period of time. At the start of writing this post, I wanted to sympathise a bit more with those who had fertility issues. However, coming a bit further on: I have to also caveat this post and say that those reading this that do have fertility issues should not hold a grudge against those who can.

Yes it’s hard. Yes it’s soul destroying. You don’t always have to be happy for them, but don’t hold onto that anger and never let it go. Having this type of anger is pretty much like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. It’s just not going to work out. Take time to grieve, and do seek help for the things that you might be suffering from. Just ensure that you never hold onto anger, because it really won’t help you in the long run.