The Strain of IVF: What It Does to You and the People Closest to You

Fertility treatment is usually talked about in numbers: cycles, success rates, costs, waiting lists. What gets far less attention is what it does to the people living through it, in the long gaps between appointments, in the car on the way home, and at the kitchen table when the phone call comes. This week is National Fertility Awareness Week, and it feels like the right moment to say plainly that IVF and fertility problems can be among the hardest things a person or a couple goes through.

This is for anyone in the middle of it: couples, same-sex couples, single people having treatment on their own, and trans parents. The details differ, but much of the emotional weight is shared. It is also for the people around them who are not sure what to say.

Why IVF Is So Hard to Live Through

The NHS describes IVF as something that can affect you emotionally and physically. The treatment itself is demanding: injections every day for weeks, scans and tests, and a small chance of a complication called ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome. Appointments, results and procedures start to organise the calendar, and the rest of life gets fitted around them.

Then there is the uncertainty. Few other situations ask you to hope so carefully and so repeatedly. Each cycle carries the possibility that this is the one, and also the possibility that it is not, and you have to hold both at once for weeks before you find out. It is common to feel on edge, tearful, flat or irritable, and then to feel guilty about it because you are supposed to be staying positive.

None of this means you are coping badly. It means you are in a situation that would strain almost anyone.

When the Diagnosis Sits With One of You

Fertility problems can affect either partner, and the NHS says that in about a quarter of cases no cause can be identified at all. Even so, when a clear diagnosis does point to one person, it can land very heavily. Feelings of inadequacy, guilt, sadness, isolation and anger are all common, as Fertility Network UK describes.

For many people the feelings go further than disappointment. The person with the diagnosis can start to feel that their body has failed, that they are less of a man, less of a woman, less of a partner, or that they have let down the person they love. These are painful thoughts, and they are usually hidden, because saying them aloud feels like making them true.

If you are going through treatment as a single person, or as part of a same-sex couple, you may meet a different version of the same questions: the weight of decisions that fall to you, the cost, the sense of a body that is not doing what you hoped, and sometimes the loneliness of having no one beside you who is living it with you. It matters that these experiences are recognised too.

A diagnosis is a medical fact. It is not a verdict on your worth, and it is not anyone’s fault.

The Partner Who Feels Helpless

When treatment is happening to one person’s body, the other partner can feel like a bystander. They go to the appointments, learn how to give the injections, and take on the practical load, and still have the sense that the thing that matters most is out of their hands. Helplessness is a hard feeling to sit with, especially for someone who wants to fix things.

Their own grief often goes unnoticed. They may be quietly longing for a child too, frightened of how much it is hurting the person they love, and unsure whether they are allowed to feel any of it when they are not the one in treatment. Many keep it to themselves so they can be the steady one. Fertility Network UK is clear that men experience the pain and grief of struggling to become parents just as much as women do, and the same is true of any partner.

Supporting someone is real work, and it does not cancel out your own needs.

When a Cycle Does Not Work

A negative result, a cancelled cycle or a miscarriage is a loss, and it is allowed to be grieved as one. The grief can feel disorienting, because what has been lost is a future you had already started to imagine, and there is often nothing visible to mark it. Other people may not know what to say. Some will say the wrong thing, such as telling you to relax or to look on the bright side.

Alongside the grief, many people feel a sense of failure, as though they should have been able to do something differently. That feeling is understandable and it is not accurate. The process is largely outside your control, and that is part of what makes it so hard.

What It Can Do to a Relationship

A couple under this kind of strain can drift apart without either person intending it. One of you wants to talk about every detail and the other would rather not mention it. One cries and the other goes quiet. Sex becomes timed and clinical. Money worries build. A friend’s pregnancy announcement lands like a blow, and you are not sure whether you can say so.

Decisions come up that nobody feels ready for: how many cycles to try, how much to spend, whether to consider other routes, when to stop. Two people who love each other can see these questions very differently, and it is easy for each to feel that the other is not on their side.

A lot of this comes down to how hard it is to say painful things without it sounding like blame.

What Helps

There is no formula, but a few things tend to help.

Agree on how you will talk about treatment. Some couples find it useful to set aside a time to talk about it, and to have other times when it is off the table, so that it does not take over every evening.

Make sure each of you has support of your own. That might be a friend you trust, a fertility support group, or a counsellor. The NHS recommends counselling for anyone having IVF, and says your clinic should offer you the chance to speak to a counsellor before, during and after treatment. The HFEA, which regulates fertility clinics, says that licensed clinics must offer counselling, and that you can also ask your GP about counselling on the NHS or look for a counsellor through the British Infertility Counselling Association directory.

Therapy outside the clinic can sit alongside all of this. It offers a place where you can say what you cannot say at home, without worrying about hurting anyone or being told to stay positive. I work with Emotion-Focused Therapy, which helps you understand what your feelings are telling you and how to express them without them turning into distance or blame. Sessions can be on your own, or with your partner, and because they are online they can be fitted around appointments and treatment days.

If you are reading this because someone you love is going through IVF, you do not need the right words. Often what helps most is simply staying close, asking what would be useful rather than guessing, and letting them know that whatever they feel, you are not going anywhere.

If you would like to know more about how I work, including fees and what to expect, see my page on online couples therapy.