If you’re in a relationship and you’ve faced infertility or loss, odds are you’ve been through the wringer. Few people are at their best under stress and when that stress is prolonged, sometimes for years, the edges of even the strongest relationship can get a little frayed and tattered.
Part of the process of coming-to-terms with a life without children is patching that old relationship and moving on down the road. But how do you even start that when so much water has gushed under the bridge? It’s hard. Sometimes when so much has changed, it’s easy to lose track of why the pair of you ever got together in the first place, but those reasons form the glue that will hold the hold mess together when things go wrong.
So, what was it about your spouse that made you decide this was the person you wanted to have children with? What made you fall in love with him or her in the first place?
When your plans for a family don’t go right, take some time to reconnect with your partner to remember what it was that made you ever start out on this journey.
Oh, and don’t forget to keep the spark ignited in the passion department. See this post for ideas!
My story is a little different. About two months into dating, I already knew I was in the relationship for the long haul. That’s when I found out that he didn’t want kids. My husband is in the FDNY and saw many of his friends’ children left fatherless after 9/11. He didn’t want to start a family only to maybe leave them fatherless one day. I was already 41 and, prior to meeting my husband, had reconciled myself to the idea that motherhood wasn’t going to happen for me, so while this was disappointing to me, it wasn’t a deal breaker. Then, about a month after we got engaged, we had a pregnancy scare. hahaha – scare! funny to think of it that way now. As we waited for test results, he realized that he did want kids with me. So, while I wasn’t pregnant that time, it was game on! Off to the ART races we went, mainly because of my age, but we soon found out that he had issues as well. Anyway, for us, because we started the relationship not planning to have children, I think the fact that it turned out we couldn’t didn’t set us back any. We had gone into our engagement planning it to be just us and a dog and that’s how we ended up.
Pregnancy loss and infertility brought us (my husband and I) closer together than we had ever been. We showed compassion to each other, through the pain. The trick now is to maintain that compassion even though the pain has largely gone – seven years on I think we’re doing pretty good! Perhaps like Kate, because we had so many years of marriage before we started to ttc, that we knew we’d be okay, just the two of us.
And why did I fall in love with him in the first place? He’s adventurous, kind, funny, compassionate, decent, practical, good-looking, taller than me, sporty (or was once upon a time), and intelligent (but about different things from me). He would have been a great dad. He likes good food, good wine, reading and travel – I don’t think I could be with anyone who didn’t love those four things.
Thanks for the reminder to reflect, and to value what we have.
i need to do this. i’ve shut down a lot because of ttc. i’ve closed myself off to Guv emotionally and sexually and it’s a real struggle to get back BUT the reasons why we got together in the first place are still there, somewhere, buried beneath it all, i just have to find them.
~x~