The impact of infertility on emotions and the marital and sexual relationship

Abstract

Forty-seven couples attending an infertility clinic were interviewed and completed forms assessing their emotional state and their marital and sexual functioning. Using retrospective assessments, more than half the women reported the experience of marital and sexual difficulties after the recognition of infertility. The frequency of both types of difficulties fell after onset of clinic attendance. Males showed smaller increases in the frequencies of these problems and predictably showed a more muted response to onset of evaluation and treatment. The results in general suggested that females may be more adversely affected by infertility than males. The presence or absence of diagnosis and its nature and timing if present, duration of infertility and investigations respectively, stage of treatment, and subjective measures such as level of hopefulness were included as potential predictor variables in the multiple regression analyses to predict levels of negative emotions and the current state of the marital and sexual relationship.