Infertility fears can damage a couple’s sex life
After lots of wide-eyed "Can you imagine?" conversations, you've decided to go for it.
The time has now come to bin the contraception. You're going to try and have a baby.
People that have spent years trying to avoid pregnancy at all costs will be reeling at the sheer enormity of it all. "Us with a child. Can you imagine?" The whole sense of the unknown can make people giddy with fear and anticipation.
And while infertility statistics have been headline news for years, nearly every couple admits they still expect to be standing in a bathroom in a month's time peering down at a thin blue line.
However, when the first month passes and the second and the seventh and the eighth and then it's a year later, emotions can be very different. Your sex life, as you once knew it, can also be devastated.
According to consultant psychiatrist Dr Conor Farren, trying for a baby, and the looming prospect of infertility, can have a "profound effect" on a couple's physical relationship.
Instead of it being fun, it's now about ovulation calendars, the right positions, optimum sperm count and the potentially most destructive factor optimal timing.
"Sex is a profession of love but when you're trying for a baby and nothing is happening, it becomes all about reproduction. Spontaneity is diminished and sex is mechanical. The act is all about the result and so one of the partners or both can begin to become very disinterested in sex," he said.
According to Dr Farren, this can have produce "a new stress" for the relationship, with their diminishing sex lives and infertility playing on each person's mind.
According to relationship counsellor and sex therapist Donal Gaynor, sex can become an emotional act for the couple as they begin to believe they will never conceive.
"After a while the whole notion of making love can go out the window. Sex can also be a time that they become really anxious and so any kind of real desire becomes nearly impossible."
People can also develop a psycho-sexual dysfunction where sex creates a well of negative emotions. Known as an inhibited sexual desire, they can't see the point of sex anymore and find it associated with deep sadness and lose all libido.
According to therapists, many such couples still love each other dearly but infertility can be smothering their relationship.
Men especially can suffer inner torment about their lack of virility, feeling like 'less of a man' while if they have known fertility issues, they can feel 'they have let her down'.
When sexual relations really break down, many seek help from the likes of Mr Gaynor who will "retrain" them in how to be intimate.
For him, sexual intimacy can be viewed like a "big rainbow." At one end of the arc is the near innocent intimacy of holding hands while at the other end is the "post-coital cigarette" of the sexually fulfilled.
"We will try and get them to go back to working out what making love is. I will often have to retrain them to use dialogue and touching to heighten sensations.
"I'll talk to them about desire and how to rebuild mutual satisfaction. Desire is about much more than penetration and people should remember that ovulation is naturally the time of greatest desire," he said.
Dr Farren believes couples battling with infertility should divide their sex lives in two. "There should be two types of sex for them and a clear line between both.
The reproductive type at the best time of the month and then the regular intimate making love at the times that you want. That could be that after a nice meal at the weekend or just spontaneous whatever you used to enjoy.
