Author name: Justin Lioi, LCSW

The primary focus of care and well-being during times of infertility is most often the woman. That makes sense. Even when it’s been discovered that the issue is male factor infertility, it’s the woman who will hopefully become pregnant and, hopefully, gives birth. Because we regularly view too much in life as binary, the man’s needs are often put on hold during this time. Since she is pregnant, or the focus is for her to get pregnant, the hopeful father is generally in a supporting role—sometimes he even feels pretty lost or as if his needs don’t matter. But every caregiver needs some care-given and every supporter needs support. As a hopeful father, have you felt yourself getting lost in the sea of taking care of others? Or noted how your irritability, anger, or “turning away” behaviors may stem from resenting that your needs aren’t being considered? You’re not alone. And you don’t have to be helpless here. There are steps you can take to get what you need without minimizing or negating what your partner also needs. Doing this can also allow you to be the kind of partner you want to be. Your Desire for Support is Not a Sign of Your Weakness Whenever a guy in my practice talks to me about how angry he is about not getting something he wants I ask in my most judgment-free tone: “What’s stopped you from just asking?” Almost all of the answers involve unhelpful patriarchal notions of strength, weakness, and vulnerability; and “asking for help” brings up all of these notions. Here are a few things that get in our way: Guilt We are good guys who love those that we have chosen as our partners. We know that they are going through hell, that their bodies are being put through the wringer, and that they’ve been socialized since their first doll (that we probably weren’t even allowed to play with) that they were going to be a Mother one day. Women are very often expected to form their identity around becoming a Mom. The “good guy” in us doesn’t want to even appear for a moment to be getting in the way of that. Often, we are afraid that if we ask for space for what we’re going through that we’re taking it away from her—and we’re not going to be considered the type of guy that does that! If we start talking about our needs, our fears, our suffering, it isn’t too long before our guilt puts our emotional needs back in second place. And then we don’t get what we need which can lead to resentment and acting out. Shame We’ve touched on this above, but it’s so insidious that it bears going a bit deeper. We (men) quickly get caught up in the idea that we shouldn’t need anything emotionally more than what we’re getting. If that’s what we’re given, that’s what a man should make do with. Asking for something more? Putting my needs out there? The idea that I may need some help? That strikes deep at our masculine cores. And to do it during a time like this? This stressful, make-it-or-break-it time? This time when the woman we love is going through so much? There’s no room for me to be taking up space with perceived weakness and neediness. I don’t want to expose that to anyone—including not to myself. And, in case you’re wondering, one of the worst things you can do with shame is to let it fester inside. Because it’s going to come out. And we’re going to have a lot less say in its expression if we spend our energy squelching it all the time. Fear One of the deadliest moments for all of us is when we are very small and we have a need—comfort, food, sleep, someone to hold us—and it’s not met. I’ve had elderly men talk to me about a memory from when they were toddlers and their cries were not attended to. They were left alone. They learned early on that they could express a need that would not be met. If this happens enough times we simply stop asking for help. Because after we’ve dealt with the shame and guilt of asking for what we need, the only thing that could be worse is being denied that help. As kids, our parents are going to let us down—that’s normal—but hopefully, there’s a repairing moment and we hold on to the understanding that usually someone shows up when we need them. We learn to self-sooth and do not need all of our needs met right away. We learn to delay gratification—but that gratification comes. We get fed, burped, changed, and eventually go to sleep. If you are wanting to dismiss all of this as “kid stuff”—I don’t blame you. But as adult men, not having those needs met consistently as kids can still affect us. It exposes a lot when we allow others the power to say “no.” And then we have to deal with that. It’s one more reason we don’t ask for the help we desperately want. Read: What Men Should Know About Emotions and Infertility “I Need You” “I need you,” is not an easy thing to say to someone who’s already going through a lot, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true and it doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be said. Many men are surprised when they discover that the energy they’ve put into hiding a vulnerability from a woman is exactly what she needed to hear. Mind you, it’s not a plea that she now stop focusing on herself to take care of you. It’s an acknowledgment that you’re in this with her. It’s a closer move toward compassion (which literally means “to suffer together”) and through an uncertain, painful, angering, fearful time like infertility, it’s sometimes the best you can offer each other. She may have all kinds of unstated narratives about how this is affecting you.

Men are socialized out of most emotions, particularly the vulnerable ones. Other than anger we are rarely given a chance to connect with our sadness, our fears, our guilt, and our shame. Yet these are all feelings that arise many times throughout our lives, and they are very strong during the struggle to have a baby. You might encounter: Fear & sadness that it just won't happen. Guilt that you waited too long. Shame that it could be your body that’s the problem and that you're not a Real Man if you can't fix it. At this point, most people ask me, well, what's the point of connecting with these feelings anyway? We Connect Through Vulnerability, Not "Strength” Masculinity can get in our way when it comes to expressing how we really feel. From the day we start being given the message that "boys don’t cry" or that we need to "be a man" it is just the start of a lifelong, consistently reinforced, shutting down of a major part of who we are. We’ve been told that this is what "being strong" looks like, but it’s a lie. Sure, there are moments when survival is all that matters and sitting in our sadness, our shame, or our fear is not helpful; there’s no need to process feelings when the Zombies are actively attacking—but we’re not always in those moments of crisis, yet we still don’t give ourselves the benefit of feeling. And there are benefits to it. Working toward pregnancy can feel and be very time-sensitive, and it can feel acute all of the time with a strong sense of urgency. Treating it with the hypervigilance that we bring to the fight/flight/freeze scenario of the bear-in-the woods or the intruder-in-the-home, though, can only hurt you and your partner. And I use the word 'hurt' specifically here because we’re not doing anyone any favors by holding our vulnerable feelings during this time. Not us, or our partners. Here’s the reason: we connect with each other through these feelings. We learn to trust each other more when we see that we can be vulnerable with someone who won’t mock us or throw it in our face and who, in turn, loves us enough to show us how scared and sad they are as well. Look to What We Can’t Control Since we were young boys we’ve been trained to "use our anger" to take care of just about everything: To solve problems To deal with stress To manage embarrassment Whether the anger is channeled toward scoring on the opposing football team, towards earning an A to show up that teacher who made fun of us or let the bullies know that they can’t make us cry, we have become masters at mobilizing vulnerability into anger and then into solutions and triumph. Until it doesn’t work that way. Until we see that life doesn’t always follow along with our plans and we’re left scratching our heads—but I did everything, right? Why do I still feel lousy? Things aren’t fair. But if I try harder, it won’t happen again. I’ll succeed. These are words and mantras we’ve been playing for ourselves for a long time. And if we really were in charge of everything and had control over all the variables, it’d be helpful. In fact, there are areas in our lives when it is helpful and we do accomplish after doubling down. Still, in some of the most important areas of our lives, it’s not about dogged persistence, coming up with a new, better equation, or forcing the circle to be a square. In these most important things—and I’m talking about relationships, disease, health, and having a baby—there are forces beyond our control that have more say on our outcomes. We can help the process along with education, discipline, and a strong will, but the idea that those things (the things we can control) can only get us so far is scary to take in. It shows us how helpless we really are when it comes to: Whether someone loves us Whether we get cancer Whether our company disintegrates and we’re laid off And, of course, whether our sperm or a partner’s eggs can easily come together to create a new, sustainable life Getting angry and looking for a new fix can only go so far. Expressing the vulnerability underneath it all can be a great relief. Expressing yourself in the form of pure anger is a relief as well, but the next layer is more tender and it’s this that needs to be tended to. If we don’t do so, our anger just blindly leads us to despair and cuts us off from those we love. Men often spend too much energy holding in their vulnerability. Letting it out provides relief and communicates to your partner that neither of you is alone.