If you are a husband who has just heard the words "male factor," I know some of what you may be feeling. I remember the room spinning when I heard them. I remember not being able to look at my wife.
On this episode of the podcast, the roles were reversed. Ginny Lupka interviewed Marjorie and me about our own experience with infertility, the story that set everything else in motion for my work. I want to write about it here from my side, as a husband, because so much of what I now teach couples I first learned by getting it wrong.
"Everyone assumed it was her"
Marjorie and I thought we would be like any other couple. We had a plan to have a couple of kids by the time she was 30 or 31. We tried for about a year before seeking help from doctors in 2017.
As Marjorie described it on the episode, before anyone knew what was going on, everyone assumed she was the problem. People told her she needed to fix something about herself. One suggestion was a chiropractor. (This is not us dissing chiropractors. It is just our experience.) Her OB started her on Clomid and expected her to get pregnant within a few months. It was not until we saw our fertility specialist, Dr. Julie Rhee, that we learned it was male factor infertility.
The moment in the clinic
We tried IUI twice. After more test results, we were told IVF was pretty much our only option. How we heard that news has stayed with me.
We were waiting on a deeper sperm analysis, one that looked at morphology. I asked our nurse, almost offhandedly, whether that result was back. She went to check. When she came back she opened the door, did not even sit down, and said it looked like my morphology was really off, that this was male factor infertility, and that IVF was probably our best bet.
I can remember what I was wearing. I can remember which coffee K-cups were in the little spiral holder. The room was spinning and I wanted to throw up, and I did not want to look shaken. I did not want Marjorie to know anything I was feeling, because I was so ashamed and so embarrassed.
Walking to the car afterward, I told her, "I can't look at you." And I couldn't. I felt that because of me, our dream had been totally altered.
Why it went so deep
That shame had me reeling about my masculinity and who I was as a man. My whole vision of who I should be and could be as a man involved being a husband and a dad. When we met at Murray State (go Racers), I knew immediately that I wanted to get to know her. When we got engaged and I moved to St. Louis, I was working as a school psychologist. I chose that career on purpose. I wanted summers off and snow days with our kids. Every decision I had made was built around having kids with her.
So when it turned out to be me, the embarrassment and shame were unreal. I changed everything I could. I wore different underwear, stopped drinking, and cut down to one cup of coffee a day. It all felt like grabbing at the wind. Maybe it would work. Maybe it wouldn't.
What I did with my fear
We started IVF in 2018. Marjorie carried the physical weight of it: daily shots, pain that made it hard to work, and long stretches of waiting. After our first transfer she became pregnant, then developed a subchorionic hematoma, which meant bleeding on and off through the first trimester and a constant fear of miscarriage.
Here is what I did during that time. I minimized her. I would say things like, "I think it's okay. It's more brown than red. Let's hold out hope."
Marjorie described feeling completely alone. In her words, she knew I was there for her, but it wasn't comforting.
When Ginny asked what I thought I was doing in those moments, the honest answer was that I was trying to rescue Marjorie out of her anxiety. I felt helpless. I saw her anxiety, and I knew it was valid because I felt it too. I just wanted it to go away, and the only thing I knew how to do was be positive.
And I did not share my own terror with her at all.
Who I did share it with was a group of guys, my friends and my brother. We had a text thread, and I would just unload on them. We are Christians, and some of those friends, men I had never prayed with before, started sending me messages early in the morning with their prayers written out for us and for the baby. That meant more than I can say.
Not everyone responded that way, and I learned there were safe people I could share with and people I couldn't.
But look at what was happening. Marjorie and I were going through the same thing adjacently, not together. I was scared to bring my anxiety to her because I didn't want to bother her with it, and I wanted to rescue her out of hers. I don't think we knew how to navigate that at all.
When things got worse
We had our first son, Jonah. People tend to assume that once you have a child after infertility, everything is fine. The trauma does not go away, and for us it got worse. After our second son, Isaac, was born, Marjorie had a medical emergency that ended in a hysterectomy, and with it, any choice about more children. By then I was starting to understand her experience, and I was the one rattling the cages in the ER, asking someone to do something for her. The rest of that part of the story is Marjorie's, and I would encourage you to hear it in her own words in the episode.
How we learned to turn toward each other
Somewhere between 2018 and 2020, I changed. My fear turned into anger, a really intense anger that this happened to us and that it happens to couples in general. I became more assertive and more confident, and I knew I needed to leave school psychology and get a PhD in counseling. I wanted to study why we went from not being able to talk about what we were feeling to being able to talk about it. We later published a duoethnography describing that process: moving from being completely misattuned to being mostly attuned. I don't think any couple is perfectly attuned.
I remember telling Marjorie I wanted to do the PhD while we were folding laundry. A lot of people were telling me not to leave a stable job with a pension and health insurance. Marjorie said, "Yeah, you should do it, babe." Having her blessing on that change of course was a big part of how I felt her attuning to me.
I use a metaphor in couple therapy: every couple is a boat, and every boat has a sail and an anchor. My sail gets big. Marjorie is my anchor, and I need her to rein me in. She still does.
For my part, the change came down to one thing: I stopped trying to rescue her out of her emotions, and I started to sit with them and validate them.
Marjorie said that what helped her was when I started listening instead of trying to fix everything. She told Ginny, "I didn't want the counselor side of you. I just wanted my husband."
That is where the wet soap metaphor I use with couples comes from. When your partner brings you a problem, you want to grab it. But the harder you grab wet soap, the faster it slips away. I was losing Marjorie that way. When I held it gently, validated her, and listened, she felt heard. Over time, we were able to do that for each other both ways.
What conflict looks like now
Our conflict has never gotten very heated, but early on we avoided each other a lot. Now we can say, "I'm really stressed about this, and it's probably going to come out sideways toward you this week." We have been doing that a lot lately, and it lets us hold space and have grace for each other.
A lot of it is assuming goodwill. John Gottman calls this the positive perspective. I know Marjorie does not wake up thinking, "How can I be mean to Clay today?" We still mess up, but we are much less reactive with each other. I am doing a better job of not shaping a narrative, of not assuming what she means or what she needs, and just letting her tell me.
The advice that doesn't help
When you are going through this, you hear a lot of advice. Some couples, as I like to put it, can sneeze and get pregnant. We love those couples. They just don't always know what to say to the rest of us.
Marjorie said on the episode that she would ask people not to say anything that starts with "at least." At least you got pregnant. At least you're still young. And please, not "just relax."
People who say these things usually just want to help. It is well-meaning, and it still doesn't help. Sometimes it hurts, and it is okay to say so. Toward the end of our treatments I got better at saying something like, "I know that was loving. What would help more is if you could just hear me." Then I had to practice not feeling guilty about their reaction.
What I would tell couples
Infertility is hard. It does not have to destroy your marriage or your relationship.
When we were in the middle of it, and there was a real question of whether we could have kids at all, I had a thought one day that no matter what, I would choose her. I didn't choose her so that we could have kids. I chose her to live my life with her forever.
So that is what I would tell couples: remember the person you chose. No matter what happens, you can still choose them.
