Never Knew This to Be Something My Husband and I Had to Fight About

I’ve always been the type of woman who succeeds at whatever I set my mind to. Whether it was school, my career, or even personal goals, I’ve always been able to push through and come out on top. Success has been my constant companion, so when infertility became part of my life, it felt like the one thing I couldn’t control. And that, for me, was something I just couldn’t accept. My husband and I had always talked about starting a family. We were excited to raise children in our new home—the one we’d just bought, imagining it filled with the sounds of little footsteps, laughter, and all the mess and joy that comes with raising kids. We picked out the perfect house, in a neighborhood we loved, and it was everything we’d dreamed of. The kind of place we thought would be our forever home. But life didn’t go as we expected.

Months passed, then a year, and despite our best efforts, nothing happened. I told myself not to worry. “It’s just not our time yet,” I would say. But deep inside, I started to feel something I’d never felt before: failure. The kind of failure I didn’t know how to handle. I’ve always been able to make things happen, but this? This was something I couldn’t fix. And that was terrifying. 

Every failed cycle hit me harder than the last. Each month felt like another piece of my dream slipping away, and I began to wonder if I was broken. Why wasn’t my body doing what it was supposed to do? Why was I, a woman who’s been successful in almost everything I’ve done, now facing something I couldn’t conquer? It didn’t help that my husband and I, usually so in sync, started drifting apart during this time. It wasn’t that we didn’t want the same thing, but it was as though we were speaking different languages. I would feel crushed after each negative test result, and he would try to comfort me, but often, it felt like his words were empty. He wasn’t feeling the same deep sense of loss that I was. And I didn’t know how to explain the weight I was carrying. 

I began to resent the fact that he wasn’t going through this pain the same way I was. I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t upset or why he didn’t seem to carry the same burden. It wasn’t until one night, when the tension finally boiled over, that I realized I had never really shared how I felt. I hadn’t opened up about the way infertility made me question my worth as a woman, as a wife, and as someone who could fulfill this one big dream of becoming a mother.

 We were sitting at the dinner table after yet another negative test. I don’t even remember what I said, but I blurted out, “Maybe we weren’t meant to have kids. Maybe this house was just meant for us, and it’s not supposed to be filled with children.” He looked at me, clearly shocked, and said, “Why would you say that? Why are you giving up?” I didn’t know how to explain the deep sense of failure I felt. I had always succeeded at everything—how could I accept that this was something I couldn’t fix? How could I face the reality that this dream might not happen for us? That night, we talked for hours. For the first time, I shared how deeply this was affecting me. I told him about the shame I felt, the feeling of being broken. And I realized in that moment that he wasn’t the one who had changed. It was me. 

I had stopped being able to talk about my feelings, and I had started to hide my pain, thinking that it was something I should fix on my own. He told me that he was scared too, just in a different way. He didn’t know how to help, but he wanted to. He didn’t realize how much I was struggling. And suddenly, I understood that we had both been fighting this alone, in our own corners, without realizing that infertility wasn’t something either of us could fix by ourselves. 

From that moment, we started working through it together. We talked openly, no longer hiding our fears or frustrations. We sought help, tried different treatments, and learned how to communicate in ways we hadn’t before. And slowly, as we began facing infertility as a team, I realized something important: Success isn’t just about overcoming challenges on your own. 

Sometimes, success is about how you handle the things you can’t control—together. We may not have the children we thought we would by now, but I’ve learned that infertility doesn’t define us, and it doesn’t define our marriage. It’s just one chapter in our story, not the whole book. And while our dream of filling this house with kids might not have come true, we are still creating a life together—one that’s filled with love and growth. If you’re going through something similar, remember that it’s okay to feel broken, to feel like you’ve failed. But also remember that you don’t have to fight this battle alone. Sometimes, the hardest battles lead to the strongest connections. And for us, that’s been the silver lining in this journey we never saw coming.