Infertility affects approximately 9% of men and 11% of women of reproductive age in the United States. About 15% of couples who want to conceive will experience infertility, defined as inability to get pregnant after one year of unprotected intercourse (or six months if over age 35). You’re not alone in this struggle. Infertility can result from female factors (30%), male factors (30%), combined factors (30%), or unexplained causes (10%).

While therapy doesn’t treat the medical aspects of infertility, it significantly improves your quality of life and emotional wellbeing during this difficult journey. Therapy helps you: manage the grief, anxiety, and depression that often accompany infertility; navigate the stress of treatments and procedures; maintain your relationship with your partner; cope with pregnancy announcements and baby showers; make informed decisions about treatment options or alternative paths to parenthood; and develop resilience regardless of outcome. Many people find therapy makes the infertility journey more bearable and helps them feel less alone.

Infertility creates unique stress on relationships. Sex becomes scheduled and clinical rather than spontaneous and intimate. Partners often grieve differently, one may withdraw while the other seeks connection. Financial stress from treatments adds tension. You may disagree about how long to pursue treatment or what options to consider. Therapy helps couples: communicate openly about their feelings and needs, understand each other’s different coping styles, maintain intimacy beyond baby-making, make decisions together, and support each other through disappointment and grief.

Grief related to infertility is normal and includes sadness about not conceiving, mourning the loss of the pregnancy experience, feeling frustrated or angry about your situation, and grieving your imagined future. This grief comes in waves and improves with support. Depression involves persistent hopelessness, loss of interest in all activities, changes in sleep and appetite, thoughts of worthlessness, and difficulty functioning daily. Infertility grief can develop into clinical depression, especially after multiple failed treatments or losses. A therapist can help you distinguish between the two and get appropriate treatment.

It’s completely normal to feel pain, jealousy, or anger when others announce pregnancies, these feelings don’t make you a bad person. Coping strategies include: allowing yourself to feel whatever comes up without judgment, setting boundaries (it’s okay to skip baby showers or limit social media), communicating your needs to close friends and family, finding support from others experiencing infertility, and being compassionate with yourself. Therapy provides a safe space to express difficult feelings and develop healthy coping strategies for these triggering situations.

Yes, many couples benefit from counseling before beginning fertility treatments. Pre-treatment counseling helps you: understand the emotional demands of fertility treatment, align expectations between partners, discuss how you’ll make decisions together, plan for potential outcomes (success, failure, financial limits), and develop coping strategies in advance. Starting with a strong emotional foundation and communication skills makes the fertility journey easier to navigate, regardless of outcome.