Fertility Counselling and Relationships: How Couples Therapy Can Help
By Georga Gorrell, Psychotherapist
Fertility journeys don’t affect individuals alone, they impact relationships too.
Whether you’re going through IVF, trying to conceive, exploring donor options, or grieving pregnancy loss, the emotional toll can create tension between even the most connected couples. And while most of the focus is often on physical outcomes, your relationship deserves care too.
You might find yourselves:
• Communicating less or misunderstanding each other
• Feeling emotionally distant or disconnected
• Arguing more, often about seemingly small things
• Experiencing different grief responses or coping styles
• Avoiding intimacy, both physically and emotionally
These are common, yet often unspoken dynamics in couples navigating fertility.
How Fertility Challenges Can Strain a Relationship
Fertility journeys touch deep psychological and existential layers, around identity, timing, control, loss, and the future you imagined together.
For some couples, the experience brings them closer. For others, it creates unspoken tension, resentment, or isolation. One partner might become hyper-focused on outcomes, while the other withdraws. Emotional needs may shift. Physical intimacy may feel pressured or avoidant. You might not know how to talk about it without spiralling.
The relationship can start to feel like another thing that’s “not working”, when in reality, you’re both overwhelmed in different ways.
What Couples Therapy Offers
Couples Therapy in the context of fertility is different from general Relationship Therapy. It holds space for the specific emotional terrain of:
- Failed or repeated IVF rounds
- Loss or miscarriage
- Decision-making around treatment, timing, and/or finances
- Sexual and emotional disconnection
- Grief and anxiety showing up differently for each partner
- Navigating solo parenthood, donor options, or childlessness
Therapy doesn’t aim to “fix” your relationship, but to offer a space where both of you can feel heard, held, and supported in the same room.
It allows you both to:
- Talk about what’s really going on underneath the surface
- Feel less alone in your own experience
- Understand each other’s inner world with more empathy
- Repair ruptures and find ways to reconnect
- Process grief and decisions together, not in isolation
You Don’t Have to Navigate This Alone
At our practice, we support couples through all stages of the fertility journey, from early uncertainty to post-treatment grief. Whether you’re trying to conceive, currently in treatment, or working through the aftermath of loss or disappointment, this space is designed to support both of you.
You don’t need to be at crisis point to reach out. And you don’t need to have all the answers. Fertility Counselling for Couples is often about holding space for what’s tender, and helping you remember that you’re on the same side.
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