Anonymous wrote:The one thing that made my infertility easier to manage was how wonderful my DH was about it all. That carried over to be wonderful and caring during pregnancy, and post-partum. And now he's an excellent hands on father.

He very much wanted to be a father, and was on board with me every single step of the way. He WANTED to come to all my appointments, wanted to hear about it all, was my partner and team mate.

So yeah, I'm also going to say this is a huge blaring red flag. This is not a "men are different" thing. This is being a jerk about the first real trial in your marriage. It does not get EASIER after the kids are born. It gets MUCH MUCH harder.

I’m with you. The number of posters saying “men are just like that” is really surprising me. My DH isn’t a super effusive guy but he was IN IT with me, wanted to understand everything, etc. We’ve got our transfer for #2 next week and DH has been a little more laid back this time around, but he does lots of check-ins with me about how I’m feeling, what’s happening, what I need. Maybe the previous posters didn’t just want/need that type of support from their spouses, which is certainly valid, but I did/do.

Maybe a calm, cards-on-the-table, “here is what I need to feel supported here” discussion is warranted. His response— whether he is willing to meet your needs (even if he’s personally more go-with-the-flow) during this process— might be telling.

Anonymous wrote:We are trying to conceive baby number 1. I have PCOS so I’ve been taking Femara and a trigger shot each month (this is only 2nd medicated cycle). Whenever I mention anything TTC related, my husband acts indifferently, or worse, mean. He says all I talk about is TTC, which is not true because I’ve made a conscious decision NOT to do that. He also rolls his eyes, etc . Due to this behavior, I’ve asked him multiple times if he wants to keep trying and he tells me yes, but I just don’t understand where this attitude is coming from. I’m not sure if it’s the hormones or what, but my feelings are hurt. I feel like he’s not in this with me. Has anyone BTDT? Not sure what I’m looking for... I guess I just needed to vent somewhere.

it's my understanding the OP hasn't followed up with any more information other than this ...

I think everyone jumping to divorce are sensationalizing. Until we know more about the situation we can't know if this is a major "red flag" in their marriage, if OP is being overly sensitive as a result of hormones (she mentions trigger shots), or they just have different ways of dealing with challenges.

regardless - the advice should be COMMUNICATION - marriage is hard, if you jump ship at the first challenge you will never grow together. put in the work and effort to communicate your feelings while making sure to be respectful and empathize with his feelings, as what he needs may differ from what you need, and neither need is right or wrong, just different.

The one thing that made my infertility easier to manage was how wonderful my DH was about it all. That carried over to be wonderful and caring during pregnancy, and post-partum. And now he's an excellent hands on father.

He very much wanted to be a father, and was on board with me every single step of the way. He WANTED to come to all my appointments, wanted to hear about it all, was my partner and team mate.

So yeah, I'm also going to say this is a huge blaring red flag. This is not a "men are different" thing. This is being a jerk about the first real trial in your marriage. It does not get EASIER after the kids are born. It gets MUCH MUCH harder.

yup yup yup to 17:20 and & 11:41 above me.

You know your husband best - it sounds like this could fall into two camps (1) he is just a man who is processing this struggle differently that you, and you want him to process it similarly to you, or (2) he is not supportive and you need to find a better match before you have children.

Do you have examples of him being mean? that might help illuminate if this is (1) or (2)

As for my experience, we dealt with IF (male side) for a while, the longer it would continue the more extreme my ups and downs (hormones and excitement, hormones and defeat) and the more reserved he became on the topic. I felt I wasn't talking about it much (considering how much I was THINKING about it, as I tempted every morning, peed on sticks, checked my cervix, charted sex, etc etc) but once I had a sit down with him - I realized he still thought I talked about it too much and it made it no longer fun, but a chore - his mindset was "if anything changes, let me know" otherwise he wanted to semi ignore that we were TTC and just let it happen naturally (this obviously wasn't an option as we had male side IF issues, so I continued to do all my 'work' to know when i was ovulating, but found other sources for support (friends & mother) when i needed to vent and over-discuss TTC as I was trying to respect that we have different needs and coping mechanism when going through stress) ....

needless to say, we had a hard year or so while TTC but with open communication on the matter - i would try and see his side and be considerate, and he would try and see mine - we survived and i think grew a lot stronger and supportive as partners because of it

I think the 17:20 poster is spot on.

I just don't think (most) men understand/feel the same way about IF as women do. They're not going through the same thing, they don't have the hormonal changes and they don't understand necessarily what it means. ignore the naysayers and "you're headed to divorce," you know your husband best.

My husband is an awesome father, but when i was doing IUI and IVF, he was kind of blase about it all. it was only when i was on my 3rd IVF did he really start getting sympathetic. (and that coincided with him giving me the PIO shots ad he saw how much pain i was in b/c of those shots.)

My husband was similar. I wouldn't describe his behavior as mean, but there were times he seemed indifferent and blase. I knew that he would be so happy once I was pregnant and would fall in love with our baby, but it was frustrating bc I was going through so much physically and emotionally. DH is not someone who shows emotion readily but I knew he hated seeing me so stressed out and was trying to project a calm indifference (just not so successfully), especially when cycles failed. I really think there is no way that men and women can experience infertility at the same level - the physical toll is so hard to comprehend when you're not living it. DH was amazingly supportive while I was pregnant and is now a wonderful father.

It's so tough getting advice on this issue on an anonymous forum. You know your husband best - if he is just dealing with the stress of infertility poorly then that might not change until it's over. If you can truly say you're worried about starting a family with him based on his attitude, that's a much different story. I will say that a lot of my friends who have gone through infertility have at some point complained that their husbands were not as invested in each cycle's outcome as they were. I would prioritize a date night soon where you don't talk about fertility stuff at all. Get out of the house and shake it off a bit. I found that I was a bit of a homebody while I was going through it bc I was so exhausted and down. It helps to break that cycle. Good luck!

I'd definitely consider couciling to talk these things out. He might not fully grasp the fact that you have a medical condition that will not allow you to conceive without some form of infertility treatment. If you need to go more serious routes to conceive, such as IVF, you need to make sure now that he's going to be there with you. And if he's not, you don't want to have a child with someone that isn't supportive.

As for his reactions to you, there's no excuse for him being rude to you. But I will say, I don't think men aren't as interested in the details as we are since it's not their bodies. My husband has always been supportive during our IVF process (which we're doing because of his infertility which we knew about prior to our marriage), but he never really seemed to take much interest in the details. He was excited when there was good news, but I don't think he ever paid attention to me when I was telling him about medication changes and how my scans went. And when I had a miscarriage, he was never that upset. He was cautiously optimistic the whole time and said he never really wanted to get excited about the pregnancy until it got further along.

If you are having marital difficulties, the time to take care of it is before you have kids. I was so into TTC that I tried to ignore that we weren't communicating well. When I delivered twins, I thought all my problems were over, only to realize that taking care of newborns(!) and extreme lack of sleep were exacerbating problems we had before the kids arrived. I'm kicking myself for not seeing a professional before getting pregnant. It was much harder to schedule something like that with a newborn's schedule. Good luck to you on all fronts