The Key to Your Relationship Surviving the Stress of Infertility: Lessons Learned the Hard Way

“Inflicting the worst heartache I’d ever felt, infertility ultimately led to my divorce.”

~From The Energetic Fertility Method: Tools for a Healthy Conception and Beyond by Nancy Mae

My journey with infertility challenged me to my core. A myriad of emotions surfaced during this time – feelings of hopelessness and grief, desperation and shame, feelings of being punished and of being betrayed by a higher power.

Through this experience I learned that, in the strangest way, infertility is an invitation to extraordinary growth. The key for your relationship is whether you and your partner are on the same or at least a similar journey or if the two of you are on separate paths altogether. This makes a difference in the outcome. I know it did for me.

Throughout my life I waivered back and forth about whether to have children. I knew that having kids would mean a lot of personal growth on my part. In the end, I decided to have kids, with the determination that any negative patterns would stop with me. What I didn’t factor in at the time was how important my partner’s support would be in the equation.

The first month we tried I was pregnant with my first daughter. The pregnancy was not easy. The nausea was so bad at times that I didn’t know if I could continue. It was during this first pregnancy that I found myself in need of emotional support for the first time in our relationship. This was not something that my partner was used to providing. Fast-forward a year when we were ready to try for our second child. We conceived right away and everything seemed to be going well. The estimated due date for this baby was the anniversary of my mom’s death. Surely nothing could go wrong. This was meant to be – or so I thought.

During our first pregnancy, my partner and I found out that we were carriers of cystic fibrosis. We decided to get genetic testing to make sure our second baby was okay. We went to the clinic for the testing only to find that the baby’s heart had stopped beating. Even though I didn’t show any signs or symptoms of a miscarriage, I had miscarried. I was devastated. We left out the back door. When we got to the car I yelled and slammed my fists on the dashboard. My partner asked me what the big deal was. In his mind, he thought that I was overreacting.  I lost it. I said, “You have to be f***ing kidding me!” I’d lost a child. My world was shattered. Here I thought this baby was going to mend my heart and instead it tore it apart.

From this time forward conceiving was a challenge. We were diagnosed with unexplained secondary infertility. It was almost like my partner and I were roommates that happened to share the same bed and to take care of our young daughter together. The only time we really worked together as a couple was once a month when I was ovulating. We were in two different worlds.

I always had hope that bringing in our second child would help to mend our relationship. What I didn’t realize at the time was that my partner and I did not have a strong foundation to our relationship to begin with. So when the challenges of having a family came along, we were trying to build a home without the proper support in place. Along the way we tried a variety of things to get our relationship back on track. We went to couples counseling and even worked with an energy healer. While energy medicine helped to bring in our second daughter, it was not able to help us heal our marriage. We were on disparate paths and they kept getting father and farther apart. The stress of infertility took its toll on our relationship and ultimately led to our divorce.

Infertility is an opportunity to look at your foundation, as an individual and as a partner. I invite you to embrace your exploration with lots of love and compassion.

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