Fighting With Your Partner About Infertility

Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen | | 0 Comments

Fighting with your partner about infertility is normal, because it may be the most stressful challenge on your marriage! The stress of not getting pregnant can lead to depression, despair, and other health issues. Here’s how fighting about infertility affects your relationship – and how it affects a wife’s health more than a husband’s.

First, a quip about marriage:

“A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.” – Mignon McLaughlin.

Even if you haven’t fallen in love with your spouse in a long time, remember that fighting about infertility is normal, even in a strong marriage. For more in-depth info, click on Love and Infertility: Survival Strategies for Balancing Infertility, Marriage, and Life by Kristen Magnacca. And read on to learn about the effects of fighting with your partner about infertility….

Fighting With Your Partner About Infertility

How marital conflict affects health. The health effects of marital conflict are cumulative – which means they build up over time and can do long-term damage. Stress hormones are released during conflict. Those hormones damage your immune and endocrine systems, which is unhealthy for all aspects of your physical health. The immune system can be lowered for several hours after marital conflict, making you more vulnerable to colds, viruses, and other illnesses. If marital conflict is a constant presence in your life, your overall cardiovascular health may suffer – especially if you’re approaching the winter of your life (say, in your 60′s or older).

This is all related to wives in particular. Research shows that husbands don’t suffer the same health consequences during marital conflict.

Fighting About Infertility: Why Her Health Suffers More

1. Women view emotional relationships as extremely important. Women tend to rate positive relationships as very high on a life satisfaction scale, so fighting about infertility has a more negative impact. Good connections with others offer a sense of well-being and support; marital conflict affects women more than men. Men, on the other hand, experience their relationships as less important to their overall life satisfaction. American men particularly rate independence and personal growth above relationships as sources of fulfillment, which means they’re less likely to be affected by marital conflict.

2. Women tend to take more personal responsibility. Because women have an instinct to nurture and take care of others, they feel distress when they’re faced with marital conflict (especially related to infertility). Wives are more tuned in to the ups and downs of the marriage. They’re more emotional when they’re fighting about infertility and other problems, which affects their physical health.

3. Women ruminate more. They think about marital conflict, reviewing who said what both in their minds and with their friends. Simply recalling an argument brings the same physical effects as the actual argument, which means the immune system is affectly negatively even when the fight about infertility happened yesterday or last year.

How to Lessen the Effects of Marital Conflict

Wives, if you tend to obsess about marital conflict or your fights about infertility - stop! Retrain your brain to think positively. Focus on the things that lighten your mood and lift your heart, not those that bring you down. Not only will your health benefit; your mood, attitude, and interactions with people will take an upward spiral as well.

Men, research shows that husbands who display empathy and kindness during marital conflict can positively affect their wives’ health. Do her a favor: show her your best side during a fight about infertility.