What is it about infertility that makes it so difficult to understand what it's like until you personally experience it?
As with anything, you obviously understand a situation best when you've actually walked down that road yourself. But sometimes, maybe even most times, when someone else is in a difficult situation or suffering, you can have a (decent) general idea of what it's like to be in her shoes and can show compassion appropriately. For example, if your single friend's father died, you could imagine what it would be like to lose your own father and probably could come up with a list of emotions or reactions that your friend might be having. Sure, you could still say the wrong things, but you'd at least grasp the idea that your friend is hurting profoundly and will be grieving for a long time. Years later, you would understand if she leaves the room during a wedding reception when the father-daughter dance is announced and would likely want to make sure she's okay when she returns.
Maybe a father dying is a bad example to compare to IF because death of loved ones is a universal experience while IF is less common, but hopefully you get the idea that other types of suffering are easier to understand.
For some reason, infertility is different for the majority of people. If you haven't experienced it (or miscarriage), imagining what it's like to go through infertility seems to be very difficult and translating that into appropriate compassion for an infertile friend is rarely done well. I mention miscarriage because my friends who have experienced a miscarriage without any difficulty conceiving for subsequent pregnancies have been so supportive and kind to me in my infertility, even without knowing exactly what it's like to not conceive. Maybe it's because the sympathetic comments they want to hear after miscarriage are similar in nature to those that would comfort an IFer and the loss of the dream of holding a child in your arms is comparable. (I don't presume to speak for someone who had a miscarriage. Please correct me if I misspoke...er...mistyped.) Single ladies who long to be married and have been waiting for years to meet their future spouse also tend to relate well to IFers, in my experience.
Lest you think I am blaming anyone, I include myself in that group who couldn't show compassion before I knew I was infertile. During FCP training (I was pre-IF then), there was some brief talk about working with infertile couples, but I don't remember what was said. Either I spaced out or there wasn't much said. I remember receiving a list of books we could purchase and read to get a better idea of what an infertile couple is going through, but I honestly wasn't going to put in the extra effort for something that I didn't see a need for. I thought if it was important they would have emphasized it during FCP training, not mention it as optional reading. I just thought I'd teach IF couples how to chart and send them to a NaPro doctor. I primarily saw infertility as the symptom of one or more medical problems, which may or may not be fixable. (How I would l love to interview the pre-IF me right now!) The emotional toll infertility takes on a couple was not on my radar AT ALL. If you had told me that IFers experience similar rates of depression to cancer patients, I might not have believed it. Or if you told me how often and easily the tears come and how much of everyday life is affected by IF, I would have been shocked. My supervisor gave me a couple tips on what to say to infertile couples (1. don't promise them a baby and 2. remind them NaPro is not a quick fix and may be unlike anything they've tried before), but that was it. I did receive a little sensitivity training later that I wrote about here.
Sometime after I started as an FCP intern, I ran into a friend of mine. I knew she used the Creighton Model because we both learned from the same practitioner. She revealed that she had been TTC for more than six months and hadn't conceived (so she was "officially" IF). I don't remember exactly what I said, but I don't think I said much in response. At the time I remember thinking that I had no idea what to say to her. I hope I said, "I'm sorry," but that would have been it. I definitely erred on the side of not saying much so I wouldn't say the wrong thing. I do remember that I didn't feel too sad for her; I had no idea how much her heart was breaking. Normally I'm pretty sympathetic (or empathetic) if a friend is sad. I will often cry if a friend is crying or even before she cries, but this time I just didn't understand what she was going through so I didn't know I should be sad for her or with her.
This baffles me today because at the time of that conversation, I wanted nothing more than to have a bunch of kids. Why I couldn't take two seconds and think about how I would feel if I couldn't have kids and that dream would go unfulfilled is beyond me. Later when I learned we were infertile too, I thought back to that conversation with her and wished that I could do it over.
Why didn't I know better?
What is it about infertility?
Why do non-infertile people have such a hard time sympathizing or empathizing with an IFer?
Here are my shots in the dark at answering that ten thousand dollar question:
1. Nobody died - With primary IF and never having been pregnant, no person existed for whom you could grieve. Grieving the absence of a person who never existed might not make sense on the surface, so it might not cross the mind of a person who wasn't infertile.
It reminds me of this quote from Laura Bush:
"The English language lacks the words to mourn an absence. For the loss of a parent, grandparent, spouse, child or friend, we have all manner of words and phrases, some helpful some not. Still we are conditioned to say something, even if it is only “I’m sorry for your loss.” But for an absence, for someone who was never there at all, we are wordless to capture that particular emptiness. For those who deeply want children and are denied them, those missing babies hover like silent ephemeral shadows over their lives. Who can describe the feel of a tiny hand that is never held?"
2. Nobody is dying - IF is not a life-threatening illness so in that sense the medical problems underlying IF don't seem so devastating or serious, say, as someone who has cancer. (I know this is comparing apples and oranges but a non-IFer might not be able to see that IF can be devastating in its own right even without the life-threatening aspect.)
3. All they know is joy - If your life is mostly joyful and is going the way you want it, it can be hard to put yourself in a mindset to sit with someone in their sorrow or difficulty. It seems to be a common tendency to want to alleviate someone else's suffering or to try to fix the problem rather than to just stand at the foot of the cross and suffer a little with them.
Maybe it takes great suffering to learn great compassion for others' suffering, especially for suffering that is not easily apparent (IF) to the non-initiated.
4. More than meets the eye - People underestimate the desire to have biological children—the desire for the love you and your husband have to directly result in the creation of another person (co-creation with God)—and maybe the only way it would sink in is if you couldn't fulfill that desire. From a secular perspective, children can be seen as more of an "accessory" to marriage and not one of its primary aims, so not being able to conceive might be thought of as a minor disappointment or not a big deal because children weren't valued as much in the first place. You would think that Christians, and especially those who have studied the Theology of the Body (TOB), would have a greater chance of grasping this because they see the immense intrinsic value and beauty that children have in a family and in the Kingdom of God and see how being open to children is a reflection of God's love. At least my perspective deepened on this when I first learned TOB (and it made me go from wanting 4 kids to wanting 8 or more with the goal of wanting to help populate heaven). But then again even knowing TOB didn't give me any more understanding of infertility than the average person. (In case I am not conveying my point very well, I am not saying families of two (husband and wife) have any less value than families with children. I am also not referring to adoption at all with this point...see the next one for that.)
5. Just adopt - (this one is more speculation than the rest) Related to #4... I wonder if the fact that adoption is an option to grow families makes people less likely to dwell on the impact infertility has on a couple emotionally. If a person thinks the (only) problem is lack of children, then adoption seems to be a logical substitute to pregnancy because it results in children added to the family. Adoption then becomes the solution to infertility; however, I know adoptive parents have said that it doesn't fix or solve infertility. Infertility is not simply a lack of children, but I could see how a non-IFer might equate the two.
6. Few and far between - As I mentioned above, IF isn't super common. I've read that 1 in 8 to 1 in 6 couples experience IF. I guess that means most people know an IFer; however, IF isn't often discussed because it can be a very personal and emotional conversation that an IFer might not want to have with every person she meets. So maybe the lack of knowledge of how to relate to an IFer is simply lack of experience with them. I remember meeting a fertile woman and being impressed with her response to me after I said we had been TTC for years. It turned out one of her good friends was also infertile so she had "practice" so to speak with interacting with an IFer.
So what are your thoughts? I'm very curious to hear how you'd answer the question above.
