MORE: Video Of Dad Dancing With Special Needs Daughter Goes Viral Making each other more important than the treatment outcome will be the glue that holds you together. This means that you are committed first to each other’s happiness, then to becoming parents. If you are each putting the relationship first, you will find the decisions you have to make throughout the treatment process much easier and your romantic connection will remain a priority. It may seem like a no-brainer that anyone who receives an infertility diagnosis is going to feel angry, scared, ashamed, or some combination of all three at times. But that doesn’t have to determine how you are going to feel together. Those difficult feelings are going to arise. But you can make it clear that you are also going to work to feel connected, playful, joyful, silly, loving, romantic, even sexual too. Then it’s a matter of seeking opportunities to have experiences regularly that create those feelings in you, apart and together. Maybe it’s making sure that you take that new cooking class together or making a spontaneous decision to go rock wall climbing. When you don’t let the infertility struggle define you or dictate how you feel (at least most of the time), you are going to be much more successful maintaining an emotional and sensual connection between you. MORE: “Dead” Girl Wakes Up In Coffin During Her Own Funeral Finally, separate baby-making sex from regular sex. That’s right, have both kinds! Perhaps you are having baby-making sex during ovulation or certain phases of treatment. But you can and should also have non-baby-making sex as well. Make sure to distinguish the two. Perhaps have “baby-making” sex in the bedroom and “regular” sex everywhere else or in different positions. That way, your whole sex life isn’t defined by the stress of infertility. When your treatment is done, sex will still have many positive associations for you and there will be many fewer awkward or negative associations with sex. The bottom line is that infertility isn’t easy, no matter what the outcome. But it doesn’t have to define you or your relationship. It’s the deepest connections that are built through the hardest times, and your relationship is no exception. We will all be faced with struggles in our life but with the right perspective you emerge stronger individually and together. MORE: Surgeons Find 10-Year-Old Sex Toy Inside Woman’s Body
