What toll did it take on your own relationship?

I think it, we, we didn’t have a sexual relationship for a long period of time or if we did it wasn’t as it should have been. And I think, I think I was a bit of a pain. I think I used to cause a lot of arguments but I think I did that almost in a way to push her away. That sounds very selfish doesn’t it? or martyrish, I don’t mean to be martyrish. I really got to the point where I thought she’s better off without me and she should be with someone. I know I said this to her in arguments. I said this to her, You need to be with someone who can give you a child.

And then she’d say, I don’t want somebody to give me a child I want you.

You’re not enough, I’m not enough just for you.

Yes you are. I don’t need a baby.

And it would just be the same, a row, conversation.

Yeah so I mean it put a lot of stress on our relationship. I think I threw myself into work. I think [wife] threw herself into work but all the time thinking she should have been at home as a mum. Which is great you know that’s what I want her to do now. If I had my way she’d have packed up about three months ago. She’s very strong willed is [wife].

So how did it affect your relationship?

Well it weakened it, definitely weakened it. Which is I think one of the reasons I had to have the therapy. Because I felt, whilst I felt it was my fault that it was all happening. That I was failing. I also blamed him for not being able to support me, how I thought I needed to be supported. I felt he was weak, and that he wasn’t able to make it better. Completely, all obviously completely unrealistic expectations but that is the whole problem when you are in it. I wanted him to fix it. I wanted him to make it better. And I know he wanted to make it better, but he couldn’t. And being a man he didn’t know how to handle me either when I was slightly, you know, hysterical, you know, and if I bit his head off for something, rather than giving me a hug and saying, I know this is really hard for you at the moment You know let it out, scream if you if you need to Which is what my girlfriends used to do. He would just wratch it up and saying, Why are you shouting at me you know, as men do, bless them. And I think I needed to understand that it is not because he didn’t love me. It is just that men don’t think the same way that we do and they don’t react to the non verbal messages. I shouldn’t say all men. Because I am sure some men do brilliantly at this. But my husband, didn’t react to the non verbal messages, the same way as girls do, interestingly.

We were very, very lucky that we have a very strong marriage and I think the hardest thing for us, our marriage is very much based, we used to make each other laugh and have lots and lots of laughter I think. But at that time the laughter went and that was very sad I think for both of us. That he found ithe is younger than me, so he was nearly 26 when weit is quite young to have all that kind of going on. He is a very strong person and he is very supportive and loving. It is very, very hard sometimes. Especially come back and we have got to make love now. And then, there was one occasion, when he couldn’t rise to the occasion because of all that pressure and I was hysterical and crying and you know that was a bad thing. But generally we pulled together and he was very strong for me and I was very aware that the most important thing was always us, and I tried very hard to keep him from the worst excesses of my, you know, anxiety. So, we did try I think to protect each other a bit and he was very good throughout, but it was a bigI can see if people don’t have the strongest marriage in the world it could tear it apart, it really could.

And it sounds like it affected your sex life a bit as well?

Yes, yes, well yes. Like most people it is because it is no longer, it’s a purpose other than pleasure. So, yes. It did. It was just, in a way, I thought well what is the point of making love unless it is at the right time. You know, it is pointless and not all the time though, I do think that it was comforting at some points. But generally, certainly if there was any kind of, you know, if it was anywhere near the right time then there became a huge amount of pressure.

It was, well the point when we really started to feel that we were focussed again was actually when we went for adoption and that is partly because the course makes you focus on you as a couple and then you have lots of what they call home study, the social worker comes to the house and makes you look at your relationship and takes you back through everything you have been through from childhood and everything.

So it makes you start to re-evaluate what you have got and that did us a world of good. I mean even if we hadn’t gone on to adopt, I would have said that was a really useful experience. Because you had to then write about it, and me being a reader and a writer I loved doing that and it made us look at each other again really, and re kind of like say re-focus on where we were going and what we both wanted out of life, and we often, I mean with adoption what they are saying to you is once you have started on the home study it is not a clear and cut thing, but it is actually to make you look at and see whether you are suitable and whether you are right place for adopting. And often couples find that they are not when they starting go through the process which is why they put you through it.

And yes, we found that actually, that, I remember the social worker saying as a couple, he said, The eye contact between you he said, You constantly look at each other He said, There is something very strong ther. Which we had probably forgotten about and he said, but so you know, so it is quite refreshing to see a couple who are so close. And we were like oh oh that is really nice, you know, and it kind of re-awakened a lot of things for us that I think also obviously, because one of our kind of like goals in life as a couple was to have a family, and we wouldn’t have felt complete if we hadn’t have managed that. So we were putting our energies into the new ways that we could have a family. Working together again.

And I think [with] adoption you are working together, with IVF you are not, it is kind of the female having all the attention and the drugs and everything and the male just doing a bit. And adopting is much more balanced. You have to look at both of you, you’re both parents you’re both coming into it, much, much more level and so again you are given plenty of time to come to terms with things, to look at things. They make you go through your loss. They make you go through your experiences. They did have concerns about me because I was not the healthiest at the time. But also then they said, you know, you are working through it, you have got the support. We will support you as well. Which I am eternally grateful to them for, because they could have turned round and said, We don’t think you are fit at the minute and you know. So that for me I was lucky really that they were willing to support us so well.

So I think that is what brought us back together.

I mean the one thing [bangs table] IVF does is completely ruin your sex life and I would say even now, we have never recovered that the way it was. Not even, through all the settled kind of life that we have got now. It really does some serious damage to you. It does to your self esteem, and especially to [husband] and then to the fact that, you know, it all gets taken away from you anyway and it is a very difficult thing to recover from, and of course then the frantic trying to conceive in the first place, takes away from the kind spontaneity of all of that, so we didn’t, if I am honest, we didn’t have sex for a long, long time, after the IVF because it just felt all wrong.

The whole purpose of it had change and the whole thing was wrong and I felt like I had been completely interfered with and didn’t want anybody touching me and all of that, and [husband], didn’t like what I was doing to my body anyway, so he didn’t like touching me, and it got very, again quite complex without anybody actually talking about it, so that parallel kind of lives. We were very lucky I think because we have managed to resolve it, but I can see how people could go off and not resolve it, and end up, you know, splitting up and going off and going their separate ways.