Grieving Side by Side
Infertility is often described as a medical experience, but it is also deeply relational. When couples navigate infertility, they aren’t just facing medical decisions and uncertainty, they are also navigating grief together. And because no two people experience grief the same way, partners often find themselves on different emotional timelines.
In this essay, I explore how infertility can create moments of emotional mismatch within relationships, why this disconnect happens, and how couples can move toward greater understanding through emotional attunement. When partners learn to hear and validate each other’s experiences (without trying to fix the pain) it can transform tension into deeper connection.
I’m also excited to share a new resource created with my colleague, Dr. Clay Brigance: a podcast called Love & Infertility. In this twelve-episode season, we speak with couples who have navigated infertility as well as clinicians who support them, exploring how relationships can survive and even grow stronger in the midst of reproductive grief.
Read the full essay on Substack.
You can listen to the first episode of Love & Infertility here:
Photo by Everton Vila on Unsplash