Nurturing Your Relationship Through the Challenges of Infertility: Strategies for Couples. Part 2.

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1 . Put together a team effort.
The inability to conceive is a couple's issue, regardless of who is referred to as "the patient." Treat the problems as a team at all times, cooperating and figuring out how to divide up treatment responsibilities. Don't point fingers; the blame game seldom ends well.

2 . Create Time for play .
It's crucial to "take time off" by intentionally making time for each other because managing infertility might feel like a full-time occupation. Plan regular fun dates to help you forget about your infertility. Playtime is an integral part of vacations, and it's good to have pleasant expectations for your time away. Seek methods to prioritize your mate and invest loving energies in your connection.

3 . Focus on making love enjoyable to your partner. Sexual relationships between couples suffer when one of them becomes infertile; what was previously enjoyable now becomes a laborious task. It could be a good idea to set aside various spaces in your home for play and private work. Look back on the enjoyable moments you shared over your first few dates and try to replicate them. Arrange for intimate moments to happen during infertile periods, such sharing a massage or taking a bubble bath. Recognize that sexual intimacy need not equate to sexual activity, and utilize your creativity to arrange fun sexual encounters.

4 . Create a network of support. Unconsciously, couples frequently assume that their partner would be able to meet all of their emotional requirements. This is an impossible task in any relationship and a difficult task during infertility. A partner may feel excessively pressured to provide all emotional support during an infertile period, which can be a lonely experience. Relationships can be strengthened by others' support, particularly in trying circumstances. Promote friendships inside the family, with your partner, and on your own. Maintain a healthy balance in your encouragement system by maintaining friendships with people outside of the infertile community.

5 . Recognize personal stress management techniques. Understand your partner's and your own coping mechanisms for stress. It can reduce conflict if you can learn to recognize that each of you feels differently and deal with your emotions differently. Like a lot of things in life, infertility will affect men and women differently and require different approaches. Yet, different merely indicates not the same; it has no bearing on what is better or worse.

6 . Give your partnership some breathing space . Acknowledge that because of all the internal and external variables in your daily life, including infertility, marriages are flexible and always changing. Try to offer each other some room and separation at stressful periods to facilitate transitions. Recognize that when a couple reaches a therapy crossroads, they are rarely at exactly the same place at the same moment.

7 . Highlight the advantages. We frequently forget to express our gratitude to our partner, so all they might hear is what's bad. Positive reinforcement is more effective at changing behavior than negative reinforcement. Furthermore, infertility can take over your life and dominate all of your conversations. It could be necessary to restrict the amount of time you spend discussing infertility to set times, such as fifteen minutes in the late hours, to avoid having the conversation consume all of your time. Maintain your humor No matter how bad things become, there's always something funny to laugh at, which helps take the edge off. Sharing laughs is beneficial to the well-being of your partnership.

8 . Get assistance before issues get out of hand. Relationships can be severely strained by infertility, so couples should think about counseling as a source of information and support for resolving issues. If you discover that you are stuck or that your go-to coping mechanisms aren't working,