Chapter 6
Facing the World

Once women and men start to ask themselves, "What's wrong with me?" life gets more complicated. They usually don't want anyone to know that they're trying. Or that it is becoming a big deal. Why not?

I think the secrecy is tied up with our feelings about sexuality. Because I think most people connect fertility with virility, for men, and what is it with women—fecundity? I think in this culture success is measured by a person's sexuality. I know that's a lot of it for me, that there must be something wrong with me, that this is what I am being punished for. That if I had it all together this wouldn't be happening. That I'm not warm enough sexually. Although I know a lot of cold women who have a lot of children. I mean, my mother!
—Angie

No matter how lack of success is interpreted, women feel inadequate. They say nothing because not getting pregnant has become a sore spot, a red flag. An announcement that there is something wrong.

Women and men find themselves feeling sensitive about a whole range of subjects—fertility, motherhood, fatherhood, sexuality—subjects that are cultural symbols for what men and women do at this time of life. Anything that brushes up against their identity feels like an assault with a Mack truck—topics that wouldn't have fazed them last year or even six months ago.

Lisa described how she felt when her infertility was publicly acknowledged:

My husband is much more open than I am. He told people at work we were trying. So we were at the office Christmas party, and I was talking with this older couple, and right in the middle of what I was saying, just totally unrelated, this man burst out with, 'Oh, honey, my wife and I are praying for you.'

I was just floored. And then I stopped to think, 'How are the rest of the people here looking at us?' We can't just be a couple here like everyone else. They don't know what it's like. They were just ignorant. They had grown children, and they were just being nice.

Situations like this keep cropping up. It's like an invisible wall. Just going along, minding one's business, suddenly, like Lisa, we walk into it. This wall is the culture. It can't be seen, it can't be touched, but it's everywhere. And it springs up at the most awkward moments. Just when everything is going okay. Just when it seems as if the idea that something is wrong is just a silly notion—that's the moment—the moment when things fall apart. The moment we feel put on the spot, our face turns red, we break out in a stammer. The moment we wished we had stayed home. "Oh no, here it is again ." At parties, baby showers, summer barbecues. At weddings, right after toasting the bride and groom. At family get-togethers. Everywhere.

Marsha, talking about a party she went to, where her infertility became public knowledge, said:

Somebody standing in this circle of people said, 'Well, she's trying.' I couldn't believe it. I started to feel real light-headed, you know, dizzy with the intensity of it. I felt singled out, like I was the only one in the world without a child. And I just walked out … in a daze.

We leave these encounters feeling that we are "the only one in the world." In other words, we feel different from others. No longer their equal. As Bill said,

If you're infertile, you know the meaning of stigma because it makes you different from everyone else.

The Stigma of Infertility

When we feel we can't live up to cultural expectations about what is normal, we experience stigma. We do feel different from others in a very specific way—that we are somehow not as good as they are. A stigma is a blemish, a moral taint.

The first thing people ask you is how many children you have. We get it all the time. And we say, 'None.' And they go, 'Huh.' As though to say, 'What's the matter with you? Don't you like kids? What are you, a Nazi or something?
—Jerry

How women and men feel about themselves reflects how they view their fertility and how they imagine others will view them if the truth becomes known. In this process of comparing oneself with others, the inability to conceive gradually blights everything, even social encounters with strangers. Why do these situations take such a personal toll? A person feels devalued when a private stigma threatens to become public knowledge. At moments like this, we see ourselves through others' eyes. And, as a result, our identity is permanently affected.

RACHEL : We work in the same place. We are negotiating a new contract at work and I wanted to make sure there would be some kind of leave for people who adopt. That was my idea. I don't think I should be penalized because I get this little baby and I didn't have it naturally, if everyone else gets six weeks off and I have to go back to work the next day. That is ridiculous. So that meant talking to people on the committee negotiating the contract, and they've got big mouths. Before you know it, the whole committee knows.

And there is one woman on there, if she knows something, the whole office knows.

BILL : Well, we knew everyone knew because people in the department started saying things to us. One guy said to me, 'Get those sex books out and study them.' You know, the insinuation is that we don't know how to do things right and that is why we are not getting pregnant. Just totally ignorant statements like that are really bothersome. Although I don't think it's malicious.

The thing that bothers me is not what they think of me but their ignorance and lack of understanding. I feel a stigma like infertility is nobody's business, because they are not going to understand. Yet it has to be their business if they are in the position of making decisions.

So that's what makes it difficult. It's so weird that you have to take somebody aside in confidence and sort of educate them about the whole issue.

Where are these questions being asked? They come up everywhere—at work, at social events. At rituals that celebrate the turnings in life—weddings, baby showers. Even after funerals! But they are also being asked in ordinary, everyday sorts of get-togethers, in an atmosphere of conviviality and friendship. Well meaning. Interested. Not intending to hurt, not intending to pry.

And at one level a person knows this. And this just makes it worse, being reminded of what she, as well as everyone else, believes in.

Another area that affects my identity that I don't feel comfortable with yet is this social pressure. Although I'm not that concerned—I'm more worried about me than what other people are thinking. But those karmas still throw me off. And I know that comments and questions aren't done maliciously—I don't know one person who would do it to hurt me. But they are awkward for me sometimes, and I

wish … I feel like saying, 'It's hard enough—don't ask,' you know? And I'm not sure if it wasn't me, if I wouldn't be insensitive. I hope I would be sensitive—I never ask people if they are getting married because I got married late, too.
—Theresa

Where did these attitudes come from? Attitudes that suggest childless persons are lesser people than those who are parents. Attitudes that suggest men and women aren't doing their job.

I find that if you tell people who have children, or are expecting children, or just had children, they react to it very differently—almost like you have a disease. It's not like you have cancer or anything that drastic but there's something wrong with you. I think if we told this one couple, the wall would come up. They just had a baby. 'Oh, look, now she walks, now she talks, she smiles.' They'd worry about that because they would think it would upset us. And it doesn't. We can deal with it.
—Carrie

If women and men start to pick apart these messages, trying to unravel why they feel bothered, they realize others' attitudes reflect their own unrealized expectations. Expectations that are embedded in the culture.

In our culture, it's parenthood, not marriage, that assigns us full status as adults, that says we are responsible citizens, that gives us equality with everyone else.

People say to us, 'Oh, you can do anything you want, you don't have anything to tie you down.' And you're viewed as not as serious, eternally youthful, that you really don't have responsibilities. There's a lot of judgment. I'm sure you have heard this about people who don't have children. So we don't get taken quite as seriously as they do because they are a 'real' family.
—Jenny

Women and men start to feel these values they believe in are loaded. Values become judgments, raining down on their heads. The hardest ones to hear are the intimations that childless couples are not adults yet because they don't have kids.

I think it's partly the way other people treat you. You know, especially older women in middle age who have grown children and who are just beginning to have grandchildren. It's like, 'Oh, you're just a little kid because you haven't had children yet of your own,' and 'When you grow up, then you'll have kids, right?'
—Susan

Being childless appears to disqualify women and men from being knowledgeable about a whole period of life: childhood. Even though they were kids once, and even though most of them have been around children their whole lives, they don't have the right credentials. Nothing they say counts, because they aren't parents yet themselves.

Women are harder hit by these attitudes than men because of their pivotal role in perpetuating the family life cycle. They find themselves growing more sensitive with each passing day, as the barbs and thoughtless comments of others go straight to the vulnerable spot in their identity.

Women need to find a means of self-protection. They need to marshal their defenses. But they may feel off guard, defenseless. Because they are faced with an even more immediate difficulty—being left behind.

Being Left Behind

LARRY : A couple of friends had their kids pretty early, and I felt less pressure then because we were busy doing other things. But this summer we were at a party for a friend's birthday, and four out of nine women were pregnant. Two had just found out. And last week my brother and his wife had their third child. So I feel some pressure.

SUSAN : Right now is a real hard time because a lot of our friends who are our age are having kids. I mean, just everybody is pregnant. It makes you feel like you're the only one. It's in the media. Last month two movie stars got pregnant—they all do. And everyone at work is pregnant. It's like you can't get away from it no matter where you turn.

Friends trigger each other's biological clock.

We go through life making friends with others our age. We start early—in nursery school or grade school—and our minds and bodies develop in tandem. As we get older, being exactly the same age isn't so important. But usually our friends—especially our close friends—are within a few years of our own age. Being part of an age group means we go through life in the same stages. Sometimes we experience turning points in life together—maybe we graduated from college together, or became roommates with our first jobs. Sometimes we are drawn to each other because of similarities in our past. And sometimes because of what we share now.

Friends expect to go through life with each other. Sharing goals and dreams. Talking about whether to have children. Friends anticipate the future together, extending the preparations at home into the social arena. Together they explore what having children will mean for them. As women. As men. Friends encourage each other. They inspire each other. If they are eager to have children, they fan each other's enthusiasm. If they have cold feet, they hold each other's hand.

My friends all got pregnant, and I was left behind. They knew that I was trying to get pregnant, too. They got pregnant and I didn't.
—Sandra

Women are much more affected than men when friendships become emotionally cluttered by pregnancies and babies. When everyone else is pregnant and she is not, the cloud hanging over a woman's head grows larger. Conversations with friends have

become monologues from which she feels excluded. Everyone talks about babies.

I have about three close women friends and all of them had children in one year. It was very painful. They knew how I felt and they gave me a lot of space to avoid contact with them if I needed to. For me, the hardest part was when they would tell me that they were pregnant. Not once they were visibly pregnant, or after they delivered, or even seeing their kids—it was their announcement that did it.

Then my best friend got pregnant. I avoided her for about two weeks. She knew I was going to need some time. Then when I could sort of deal with it, I told her it was hard and she understood, but it was terrible. It was really bad.
—Dierdre

A woman feels ignored while her pregnant friends compare their due dates and how it feels to be pregnant. She feels a certain condescension whenever she volunteers anything about pregnancy or childbirth. Because what does she know? She hasn't experienced it yet. Pretty soon she shuts up. She stops talking.

People think because we don't have children, we know nothing about them. We are so stupid. We're uninformed. We can't say that they walk at fifteen months, or they walk in a year. 'What do you know? You don't have kids.'
—Carrie

Men usually don't notice at first that their partners aren't having fun. They are still talking to each other with animation. They're not talking about babies or pregnancy symptoms. They're talking about whatever they have always talked about—sports, the stock market, the deal they cut, the fish they caught. Whatever it has always been still goes on, for them.

Not only that, when women and men were all childless together, the gap between their pursuits didn't seem so great. Mutual interests cut across gender. Conversations ranged far and wide, covering topics of interest to everyone. Not anymore.

I was sitting there one day with these friends of ours who are pregnant. He had his hand on her stomach and was saying, 'Was that a little heady or a little footy?' He was making such a jerk out of himself, I egged him on. Then they wonder why I don't want to go over there. They are very into possessions. They had the room decorated five months before the baby arrived. Then you have to go in and turn on all the little mobiles, and they turn around.
—Judy

Women's daily lives are more affected than men's in the transition to parenthood. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that when a pregnancy occurs—when a child is born—women withdraw from their broader interests in life to focus on motherhood. This is a major life transition. And it deserves a woman's full attention. But when it's happening to everyone else, and not happening to her, it's hard to handle.

Men often aren't aware that women feel left out and can't talk so easily to their friends—until women tell them. Men may be surprised. They may resent it, and feel they are being put on the spot.

It's stupid to go over and pretend to enjoy yourself. But my husband thinks I'm being terrible. I just don't feel that way. I think they are being terrible. I would never dream of insisting to someone who wasn't getting pregnant that they come to my baby shower. So it has certainly changed our lives. Our friends have dropped off, and the relatives I can't stand.
—Judy

Suddenly a couple's social life has changed. They're not part of a foursome at that little Italian restaurant anymore. Instead, they're asked if they want to come along to McDonald's, where the kids can make noise. If a couple does continue to be part of a foursome with another couple who now has a child, it may get awkward, especially if a man and his best friend are having a great time together, and his partner suddenly can't bear to be around the best friend's wife and baby.

Our very good friends just had twins and I've been avoiding them at all costs. They are mortified that we haven't come over to see them and cuddle their kids. Finally, this friend shows up at Vern's work one day and says, 'Why can't you come over and share our happiness?' So Vern had to tell him.
—Judy

Women realize they need to start making some changes. To start protecting themselves from all this pain. But thinking about it is easier than doing it. Declining to attend the baby shower of a distant cousin may not be so hard, but it's a different story when it's a best friend's.

A woman tries to avoid the pain, a pain that has by now spread out to engulf her partner, too. It usually takes some time for her to realize she has to act, not just react, that she needs to set some policies and take a stand. Up to now, she has gone on fielding social situations, using all the skills she has developed in human relationships to get through each new skirmish intact.

But pretty soon, she starts feeling numb. Numb with pain. And to her dismay, just when she thinks she has mastered going numb, she isn't numb anymore. She's on the edge of tears throughout every social event, feeling tense beforehand and often feeling depressed afterward. Socializing, whether it's with intimate friends and their new baby, or with a crowd of semi-strangers, has become a living hell.

And it has become hell for her partner, too. He may feel just as miserable. But even if he isn't, he can no longer avoid knowing what it's like for her. He may be the recipient of her anger, the focal point for her tension and negative feelings. And as mad as he may get about catching her flack, he ultimately identifies with her distress and takes some of it on himself.

Taking Charge

A team approach is the best way to ride out this era of your lives. You can maximize your effectiveness and minimize the

pain and the long-term dislocations to your social relationships by joining forces and working through each issue together. After all, we are talking about the friends each of you has, and all of the people you know jointly as a couple—your entire social world. The team approach is, unfortunately, not going to banish pain, but it will recede to a tolerable level most of the time. And you will become more effective in handling social situations when you work in concert with each other.

How can I predict this will happen? When we handle our social relationships alone under these circumstances, the pain we feel is really the pain of loneliness, the pain of feeling, as Marsha did, that we are the "only one in the world." If you take charge of your social life together, you will have company.

You will find that strategizing over this area of your lives will increase your intimacy with each other. Every social encounter—every occasion that comes up—will necessitate that you put your heads together to decide what to do about that particular event, no matter how big or small. You will eventually develop a repertoire for how to cope, and sooner or later you will find yourself automatically plugging in the right strategy at the right time, then taking turns managing it.

You meet people at parties and they say, 'When are you guys going to have kids?' I feel like saying, 'Well, we're not. We're both infertile. You want to talk about it?' But what we have actually done is develop a variety of approaches, from acting carefree, saying things like, 'Who needs kids?' to outright lying. Only our closest friends know. It's not something you can easily discuss with other people. They don't always understand.
—Jenny

Good things will come of this effort. You will feel supported by each other. And you will feel less isolated from each other, which, in turn, has a ripple effect: You will feel less isolated from everyone else, too. You will stop feeling as if you are the only one in the world. Or, if you still feel that way, it won't be so hard

to bear. And in time, you will begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Life will become normal again, no matter how disconcerting it is now.

Telling Others

One of the first issues to address together is who to tell. What happens when the decision is made to tell? Sometimes it's hard to gauge what others' response will be.

GEORGE : At some point we made a conscious decision to tell people we had a problem, on the theory that keeping it to ourselves wasn't doing us any good, and maybe we could get people's sympathy and understanding.

PENNY : It was like sexually coming out of the closest.

GEORGE : Yeah, it didn't work at all. It backfired. People just didn't understand it. We started getting all the advice: take a vacation, just relax, blah, blah, blah.

PENNY : And then they started asking us the most impertinent questions. They were insensitive. They would phone me every month to find out if I was pregnant.

Penny and George had the right idea when they decided to tell others about their fertility problem. But their efforts backfired because of the way they went about it—they indiscriminately told everyone.

Secrets are not a good thing. But it is important to differentiate secrecy from privacy .

Secrets are hidden from view. They imply a stigma. If we have a secret, we may feel shameful about it. Family secrets are like this—the skeletons in our closet that we don't want others to

know about. Most people have a few of these, with feelings of shame attached to them. It's only because they have been kept secret that shame has grown up around them. Family secrets often belong to someone else—they happened in some other generation, and there was covert agreement to keep the secret. Or they happened to us, and we didn't know how to handle what happened, except to keep it secret. So the shame that surrounded those topics grew. And then they became big secrets, and the investment in keeping them hidden increased even more.

Just as family secrets become shameful by keeping them secret, so does infertility. Keeping infertility secret makes it seem like a fault that should be hidden. But infertility is no one's fault. Secrecy loads infertility with shame, with stigma—unnecessarily.

Angie was determined to keep the fertility problems she and Rick shared a secret from everyone, but especially from her family—even from her sister who had been infertile. But this amount of secrecy only served to heighten her feelings of shame.

Infertility is a shame, you are ashamed. It is such a secret thing. It is so damned. When we first went to Resolve, we were laughing as we were getting out of the car, and I said to Rick, 'After all our years in the sixties and the dope and all this stuff, this is the most underground thing we have ever done. It's coming up publicly. But interpersonally it is still underground.

Her shameful feelings were fed by family attitudes about fertility, especially those of her mother:

How did she do it—get pregnant? That is why I can't share it with her. Because she makes comments all the time about all they had to do was wipe their hands on the same towel and they were pregnant. I feel like saying, 'Oh, is that how you get pregnant?' But I don't. I say nothing.

While secrecy has all these connotations of shame that, in turn, reinforce feelings of isolation, privacy means something different.

Privacy is a human need. Something private is something not shared because it is no one else's business, not because it is shameful. No matter how gregarious or open we may be, we all need privacy in some areas of our life.

A child first learns the idea of privacy upon being toilet trained. As the child grows, the notion of privacy expands to include other areas of life, whether it is through a teenage diary or in confidences shared with a best friend.

In adulthood, we recognize our personal boundaries, and within those boundaries we define the amount of space we need for our self. As we define ourselves and our needs better, many areas of our life become private, especially from persons outside our family.

The degree of privacy necessary for well-being varies greatly from one person to the next. We all have a need to keep things to ourselves, not because they are shameful, but because they are intimately linked to our identity, to the essence of who we are.

When we choose to share this essence with another person—when we make love with our partner or have a heart-to-heart talk with our best friend—we give the gift of ourselves—of intimacy, of trust. We are exposing our self and allowing another person to get close. At this level of intimacy, we are highly selective, and with good reason. When we open ourselves to others and admit them into our private world, we do so with the expectation that they will be respectful of our vulnerability and sensitive to our needs. Sharing intimate thoughts and feelings with close friends under these circumstances can bring self-acceptance, which has the power to heal. So telling others can be a good thing. Feelings of shame may dissipate, if telling is met with acceptance and compassion.

Keeping in mind what privacy means to you and your partner, select whom you tell accordingly. Once someone else knows, infertility ceases to be a secret. It is no longer coated in shame. But it continues to be a private matter. At some level of identity, infertility will always be a private matter, even if the whole world ultimately knows.

Over time, the need for privacy surrounding infertility may

dwindle and become unimportant. When this happens, you will know that infertility has lost its power over you—its ability to make you feel bad about yourself. When you can talk about your infertility without flinching inside, you will have reached a new sense of self-acceptance. By then, infertility won't be a secret anymore. It won't even be very private, and you will see no need to make it so. This is a goal to work toward, but at your own pace. It takes time.

It is wise to start by being selective about whom to tell—whom to sit down and talk with about it. Choose people you think will understand.

I think you choose some of them carefully. You don't talk to everyone about it. One couple that we are friends with—my boss and his wife—you really could not talk to her about it. She is one of those people who just doesn't view life that way.
—Larry

I am very selective about who I open up to about this. I feel like now I'm getting enough support, and I don't need to say to everyone I meet, 'Hi, I'm infertile.' My feeling is when you are not selective, if you give a person that kind of information about yourself, you don't know what they are going to do with it. I don't want my problem to be coffee-break conversation.
—Theresa

When you do confide in your friends, be prepared for their uncertainty. Friends are concerned. But it may get awkward because they often don't know how to respond—when to bring it up, when to leave it alone.

When we were out walking, Lynn said, 'I don't know whether to ask you whether you are pregnant or not. If I don't say anything I'm afraid you will think I'm ignoring you, and if I do say something I'm afraid I'll hurt your

feelings.' So people don't even know the etiquette of how to handle you.

Another time we were up in the country with some friends, and one couple had a three-and-a-half-year-old boy. And you know, at that age they are going through whining. And he was whining. So my other friend and I left the house and went for a walk at one point because he and his mom were working on whining. And she said to me, 'Maybe you're really lucky—look at what it's like.' And I said, 'There are a lot harder things to do than have a ten-minute talk with a kid about whining. And waiting month after month to get pregnant is one of them. I would trade a ten-minute talk about whining for this any day.' People try to say the right thing to you, and they just keep sticking their foot in their mouth.
—Jenny

There is no etiquette for talking about infertility. Like many other conditions that have stigma attached to them, the person who feels stigmatized must create the etiquette and set out ground rules for others to follow. Doing so gives the individual a sense of personal power that may ameliorate, in part, the effects of the stigma. People may say awkward or odd things. They may seem overly aloof, or they may seem too interested. It is important not to let your extrasensitive feelings run away with you. Try to listen carefully to their responses or to what they say when they initiate the subject. Notice their body language, their feelings. What is important is the underlying sense of caring that is expressed, as Lynn attempted to show to Jenny. Respond to that, and just be yourself. Remember, you chose this person, probably for some very good reasons.

You might try saying something like, "Talking about infertility is awkward. There aren't any rules. Sometimes I feel like talking about it, and sometimes I don't. I'll try to be honest about my feelings."

If you can say this, or something like it, to those you have

chosen to talk with, you are really making progress. It means you're able to keep your infertility in perspective. But if you can't say things like this yet—or if you can't talk about it at all—don't feel bad. This is a goal to work toward. Don't put yourself down if you can't do it yet. Keeping infertility in perspective is one of the hardest things you could possibly do.

Sometimes the people we choose to tell are at a loss. They don't know what to say or do, so they say something in an effort to be positive or accepting, but it just isn't the right thing. And then we are offended.

The thing I resent the most from my friends who have children is, 'Oh, you can't have children? Come over and enjoy our children.' Like it's a new TV set. It's not the same thing.
—Judy

The worst thing in the world is when people want to give me good-luck charms. I hit the roof when one of my dearest friends wanted to give me this bracelet with charms on it that a friend had given her and she had gotten pregnant. I didn't scream and I didn't yell, but I told her in kind of a rude way that that was the worst thing you can do to someone like me. 'Let me just educate you about how to treat people. If we are going to be friends, you need to know that. What is wrong with us has nothing to do with luck, and I don't need your good-luck charm because what is happening to me is not bad luck. We are having real problems and that is why we can't conceive, and no amount of turtles under my pillow or beads or tea is going to help.'
—Cindy

The thing I had a problem with were the smart-ass remarks: 'Well, your husband can't get you pregnant, let's go into the next room.' That kind of thing. Kenny got that kind of thing, too. When I heard remarks toward him, 'What is wrong with you?' that hurt me more than the kind of stuff that I got because I felt I was able to handle it.
—Dorene

Sometimes a couple gets the message, "Try harder." This is part of our cultural heritage, our national ethic—the Horatio Alger story applied to infertility:

The worst is when people think—my friend John is one example of it, and my mother believes it a little bit, too—that if you try hard enough, you will get pregnant. We get this all the time. In the last State of the Union Message, the gist was, 'Try harder.' When the President is saying, 'Anybody in this country can make it if they only try hard enough,' you realize it's our national ethic. So, I guess, what else should we expect them to believe?
—Larry

Talking to others about infertility isn't easy, although it does get easier with time. And often women and men don't get the response they want or the support they need. Consequently, women, who get the brunt of questions, work at figuring out better ways to deal with the subject.

I was watching Dolly Parton in an interview on TV. Someone mentioned something about kids, and she says, 'I can't have kids.' It was really neat to see her sort of spit it out, there was no fumbling, it was just the way it was. So it has given me an incentive. I have to practice doing that.
—Belinda

Penny and Susan both reflected on their strategies, ones that you can perhaps amend to work for you:

With many people I have learned I can deal with it simply by changing the course of the conversation without being direct. I find that they cannot deal with me saying I don't want to talk about it. Then they wonder what is the matter and ask, 'Why are you upset?' So if I can turn the subject to themselves, which is their favorite subject anyway, I do. That works.
—Penny

I haven't yet figured out a technique for answering the question, 'Do you have any children?' that is a clear message that says, 'This is the end of the discussion.' I can't bring myself to say, 'No, and no more is going to be said or asked about it. It would be very rude to pursue this line of questioning.' I haven't figured out how to do that yet. It's going to take some practice. Just by giving out that much, it opens it up for discussion. Maybe just a simple no is the best thing to say. 'No, we don't.' Period.
—Susan

Sometimes, in spite of all efforts, friendships are lost. Usually, these are friendships between women. The relationship brings up too much grief, too much anger, too much pain, to keep it going.

One of the first friends I made here, she became pregnant three months later, after I miscarried, and she was very self-involved. Which was appropriate. That was okay. But we couldn't maintain the friendship. It was too difficult to do.
—Belinda

What I did was I withdrew from one person. I just couldn't be around that child without feeling really sad. And it's still there when I talk about it, when I remember the sadness and how hard it was for me to watch all my friends get pregnant.
—Sandra

A couple starts rethinking the whole script they made for themselves. What if it doesn't turn out the way they planned it?

CARRIE : If we don't have children, it will be a void because we'll always be an enigma. Most people our age are married with several kids. So most of our friends have become single people because our activities are geared that way. Yet we are a couple. So we're always going to have a problem in that regard.

RUSS : Yeah. We don't know where we fit in.

CARRIE : We don't fit in now, actually. Because most of the people who don't have children are having them now. And that's hard.

Women and men spend more and more time with their still-childless friends. If they have any friends who aren't planning to have children, it's a relief. Because children don't come up in the conversation. It's a reminder there's a whole life out there without children.

SUSAN : I guess in some ways you kind of cling to those people who don't have children. Because you feel like at least they won't reject you if you don't have childre. Even though a lot of them are kind of starting to change their minds. We have one set of friends who have decided they definitely do not want to have children. And even they are rethinking that.

LARRY : I don't think so. I asked them again. And they said, 'No,' so I think they are a potential source of support.

When women and men socialize with single friends, they don't have to anticipate each encounter, wondering how they will respond this time to volleys of, "When are you two going to have children?" They can just relax.

Our single friends—it's sort of beyond their ability to understand. They don't worry about it. Their response is, 'Oh, no success getting pregnant? Well, good—we can go out and party!' That's the way they look at it—that we're available, we're not tied down.
—Carrie

The answer doesn't lie in just sticking with single friends, though. Women and men don't want to miss out on their other

relationships. The friends who are preoccupied with becoming parents now are important. Otherwise, so much energy wouldn't have been plowed into building friendships with them in the first place. It's hard work building a friendship. When a friendship fades because of infertility, it's a loss, another loss, one we can ill afford at this time in life. It's important to find ways to keep these relationships and enjoy them.

Friends are only one issue. The other big issue looms just as large. What to do about family?