Infertility: How It Impacts Couple's Sex Lives

I have a friend who has commented about how her mother complains to her about the couple's infertility: she wants grandchildren already! This does nothing to encourage my friend; in fact, just mentioning her mother's remarks seems to "take the air out of her tires." I feel for her predicament. How does the stress of infertility affect a couples sexual relationship?

"Compared with the control group, the patients with infertility had significantly lower scores in the desire and arousal domains and lower frequency of intercourse and masturbation. Sex-life satisfaction scores were significantly lower than those of the controls" (Millheiser et al., 2010).

"Stress related to infertility had a significantly greater impact on their sense of sexual identity than other sources of stress. Sexual complaints are common among women with infertility" (Andrews et al., 1992).

Stanford University's study of infertile women shows the extent to which the problem can impact a couple's sexual life: "Forty percent of infertile women suffered from sexual problems that caused them distress, compared with 25% of a control group of healthy women. They experienced low desire and had trouble becoming aroused. They engaged in sexual intercourse and masturbation less frequently" (Millheiser et al., 2010). As Richards (2012) puts it: "When sex is so fraught with failure, it quickly becomes a casualty."

A few suggestions Richards (2012) offers is to leave the baby-making to the physician. The woman can receive injections of her partner's sperm by her physician, which may alleviate the pressure of "having to perform," and it may revitalize their sex lives. However, such a suggestion may not be assessable or affordable for some couples. For other couples, adoption is another approach which can relieve the couple of the performance anxiety, and "failure syndrome."

References:

Millheiser, L.S., Helmer, A.E., Quintero, R.B., Westphal, L.M., Milki, A.A., Lathi, R.B. (2010). Is infertility a risk factor for female sexual dysfucntion? A case-control study. Fertility and Sterility, Vol. 94, Issue 6, pp. 2022-2025.

F. Andrews, A. Abbey, L. Halman. (1992). Is fertility-problem stress different? The dynamics of stress in fertile and infertile couples.
Fertil Steril, 57 , pp. 1247–1253.

Richards, S.E. (2012). When Sex Becomes A Chore. Doublex Health, Slate, Linfield College.