[bostonyankee]

....mine too, believe me. Mine too.

DW does know my thoughts but, doesn't seem to get it. She says she needs me there with her 100% of the way. Well, guess what. This is feeling more and more like I have to 100% surrender on everything in order to 'buy peace'.

[AzooDude]

Sometimes I wish I could reach through the monitor and shake some sense into you, boston. I'm truly pulling for you to come to a sound, healthy decision, whatever that decision is, but I feel like maybe it's time for a little "tough love", so I'll be pulling fewer punches with this post in the hopes of connecting with you since many gentler comments have missed the mark.

Originally Posted by bostonyankee

on the one hand I am supposed to 'accept' the fact that the donor will be a permanent, biological part of the family. Yet I am not supposed to say that this relationship involves another man when it, by its very nature, clearly does. I don't get that.

You keep saying this, and people keep offering alternative ways to look at it, or asking you questions to try to draw out details of what you mean, but rather than acknowledge any of that, you just restate the objection as if no one is acknowledging your feelings or offering tools for coping. I and others have opined that you're hung up on "biological PART OF THE FAMILY" instead of "BIOLOGICAL part of the family", and elaborated how it is that DNA pales in comparison to many more meaningful bonds that truly make a family. You don't have to agree with that, but if you don't, maybe you could say so, and/or elaborate what "this relationship" and "part of the family" mean to you so we can better understand and support you, instead of just saying the same thing like we haven't heard you.

What do you say to the observation that even though you keep saying it's the biological connection you object to, you don't have the same objection when considering adoption? You seemed to agree with the insight that maybe it's not the donor's DNA that's the problem after all, but the way that your wife's DNA betrays you by mixing with the donor's. I think that's not only important, but quite possibly the central issue that you need to face, but it seems like you keep burying it under less guilt-inducing reasons like a nebulous "part of the family" objection that doesn't sound like your saddling your wife with ex-wife betrayal baggage.

Originally Posted by bostonyankee

I don't know. I just don't know what to do/feel/say about this whole thing. I feel like no matter how much I give, accept, concede and surrender, there's always more right around the corner.

As a little thought experiment, consider other couples who used DS (whether or not it resulted in a viable pregnancy) and think about how they likely arrived at that decision. It's probably safe to assume none of them opted for DS as a first choice, so as far as being faced with the unpleasant surprise of male factor infertility, they at least had that much in common with you. They - especially the men - probably shared many of your same objections or concerns initially, but somehow made it to the decision to use DS anyway. Do you think it would be a good choice (for the individuals, for the marriage, for the family) if the road to choosing the DS option was paved by the man giving, conceding, surrendering, capitulating, bending to just short of his breaking point, or whatever other adversarial way you care to phrase it? If that is how they got to the choice, how do you think that might affect that family's future, compared to another DS family where the option was truly accepted?

Originally Posted by bostonyankee

Basically, I want the selection process over and done with. I do know this: I will never be able to hand-select the lucky man who gets to create a child with my wife. If that is required, than this is not going to happen.

If you *still* think of the donor as "the lucky man who gets to create a child with [your] wife," then donor sperm is not for you. The donor's role begins and ends with providing a gamete that you can't. He has no relationship with your wife and she doesn't want one with him. He has no relationship with your child, and unless you opt for open donation - which seems very unlikely in your case - almost certainly never will. Even in the remote chance that the donor and your child did have some sort of contact, it would come many years into your child's life, during which time you will build and experience strong family bonds. Those bonds won't just be because you're living "like" a family, but because you'll be an honest-to-goodness-just-like-any-other family. If you do not see all this, and only see the donor as a "lucky man" who will be "with your wife" and "part of the family", then you have a grossly distorted notion of the donor-donee relationship. If you think such a relationship is automatic and inevitable, then you're ignoring abundant evidence from other DS families that it doesn't work that way, and if you think it's all those other DS families that are deluding themselves, that's an indirect insult to their judgment. There is no relationship; it is a transaction.

I'm very sympathetic to your history and it makes sense why you can't just flip a switch and be accepting of things you're not conditioned to accept, but if you can't accept these things, don't do donor sperm. If you go down this road because you surrender, or because you feel it's your duty, or because you think your marriage might fail otherwise, it will not end the stress and heartache you feel. At best, it will just defer it for a while, but if you think it's bad now, it'll be a lot worse and with much more at stake when your unresolved feelings are felt toward an actual donor family that's yours, not just a hypothetical one.

Originally Posted by bostonyankee

yeah, i mean the selection process. DW and counselor seem to think that since i am not totally comfortable looking at donor profiles that this means I will reject the child. Pure rubbish, that.

How about the wife who, by your current point of view, will have an undeniable relationship with some lucky man who isn't you? Even if you accept the child, is it pure rubbish to hear your perspective and worry that you might end up resenting or even rejecting your wife? Again, these sound like betrayal issues, not genetic link issues.

Originally Posted by bostonyankee

Maybe I am just one of those guys who is meant to be alone, and bascially guide women to the real man that they should be with.

Has your counselor ever talked to you about "distorted thinking"? (It's probably more of a topic for one-on-one counseling, but if she hasn't raised it, it might be worth exploring.) It may sound like an insult if you don't know what the phrase means in psychological usage, but it's not meant that way. It's a shorthand way of referring to several common distortions in how people think about things in ways that aren't very constructive. For example, check out 15 Styles of Distorted Thinking . If you look over that list, and then look over your posts again, I think a lot of those thought patterns will could apply. Distorted thinking can be overcome, but if you never address it, distorted thinking just leads to distorted decisions.

As always, I wish you the best.

[anilorak13ska]

Azoodude - As always, you hit the nail on the head. Are you by chance a psychotherapist? And if so, are you available for online consultations? (I'm only half kidding!)

"There is no relationship; it is a transaction." I think this quote here pretty much sums up the entire issue of ds. It'd make for a good mantra to repeat over and over for anyone wanting to come to actually believe this is true and move on. (Bonstonyankee - hint, hint )

I also found boston's comment about the "lucky" man completely distorted (LOVE the link to the distorted thinking, I think it will come in handy for me, too - thank you!). I'm trying to put myself in the position of the donor. Some guy out to make some extra money, most likely. (I'm not convinced that most sperm donors are altruists.)

Perhaps he donated years ago, has since moved on to get married and has his own family, and has ZERO interest in your wife, boston, and even less interest in starting a family with some other woman.

Or perhaps he donated recently, but opted for annonymity bc he only wanted the money, and doesn't want to think about the possibility that his sperm helped conceive a child somewhere out there.

He may or may not be a lucky man, but if he is, that luck has absolutely, positively, NO relation to you, your wife, your future child, or your family. And I'm sure he wouldn't appreciate you insinuating it, either.

Boston, I also wonder if you should continue down this path if you don't see your thought patterns being resolved. I understand that you want to do right by your wife, you don't want this marriage to fail, you don't want to disapoint your wife... but at what cost? If your wife wanted you to kill in order to make her happy, would you do it? There comes a point where you have to stand your own ground, even if it isn't what the other person would have you do.

I learned this from my husband. When we met 11 years ago, I was quite clingy and jealous and possesive. He wanted to please me more than anything, but he had certain boundaries that he explained to me he was not willing to cross, bc he didn't want to end up resenting me for it. He was seeing the bigger picture. He wanted a happy relationship with me, not a so-so relationship at all costs.

I know that had I not finally come around to his way of thinking, while it would've been difficult for both of us, he probably would have ended things with me. He had no desire to be miserable, and I had no right to expect him to be miserable on my behalf. Also had I not come around to his way of thinking, I wouldn't have been the person that I am today, and that would've been a shame.

[bostonyankee]

Originally Posted by anilorak13ska

I also found boston's comment about the "lucky" man completely distorted (LOVE the link to the distorted thinking, I think it will come in handy for me, too - thank you!). I'm trying to put myself in the position of the donor. Some guy out to make some extra money, most likely. (I'm not convinced that most sperm donors are altruists.)

Perhaps he donated years ago, has since moved on to get married and has his own family, and has ZERO interest in your wife, boston, and even less interest in starting a family with some other woman.

Or perhaps he donated recently, but opted for annonymity bc he only wanted the money, and doesn't want to think about the possibility that his sperm helped conceive a child somewhere out there.

He may or may not be a lucky man, but if he is, that luck has absolutely, positively, NO relation to you, your wife, your future child, or your family. And I'm sure he wouldn't appreciate you insinuating it, either.

Boston, I also wonder if you should continue down this path if you don't see your thought patterns being resolved. I understand that you want to do right by your wife, you don't want this marriage to fail, you don't want to disapoint your wife... but at what cost? If your wife wanted you to kill in order to make her happy, would you do it? There comes a point where you have to stand your own ground, even if it isn't what the other person would have you do.

In terms of the donor being the lucky guy, I meant that he has something (sperm) that I wish that I had. Just like many, many people out there would consider me lucky to have a nice job, work in a city that I absolutely love, have a nice house when manny are losing theirs, etc. I get the fact that this guy has zero interest in my wife, ok? I guess I am still dealing with the initial trauma of the whole thing.

The thing of it is, my writing style has always been 'stream of consciousness' meaning however I feel at the time, whatever is in my head, I put on paper or in this case, message boards. Is it sometimes muddled, sonfusing, and maybe even contradictory? Absolutely so.

In the last week or so, yeah, I had another struggle with being asked to accept a donor as a biological part of the family - however you phrase it, or emphasize it, or whatever. It is still a lot to take in. It is still very raw.

Sorry if this is not all nice and neat and clearly laid out, but I am tired of seeing my wife bawling her eyes out over this. It stirs up negative emotions in me to see her that way.

[bostonyankee]

Originally Posted by AzooDude

You keep saying this, and people keep offering alternative ways to look at it, or asking you questions to try to draw out details of what you mean, but rather than acknowledge any of that, you just restate the objection as if no one is acknowledging your feelings or offering tools for coping. I and others have opined that you're hung up on "biological PART OF THE FAMILY" instead of "BIOLOGICAL part of the family", and elaborated how it is that DNA pales in comparison to many more meaningful bonds that truly make a family. You don't have to agree with that, but if you don't, maybe you could say so, and/or elaborate what "this relationship" and "part of the family" mean to you so we can better understand and support you, instead of just saying the same thing like we haven't heard you.

What do you say to the observation that even though you keep saying it's the biological connection you object to, you don't have the same objection when considering adoption? You seemed to agree with the insight that maybe it's not the donor's DNA that's the problem after all, but the way that your wife's DNA betrays you by mixing with the donor's. I think that's not only important, but quite possibly the central issue that you need to face, but it seems like you keep burying it under less guilt-inducing reasons like a nebulous "part of the family" objection that doesn't sound like your saddling your wife with ex-wife betrayal baggage.


As a little thought experiment, consider other couples who used DS (whether or not it resulted in a viable pregnancy) and think about how they likely arrived at that decision. It's probably safe to assume none of them opted for DS as a first choice, so as far as being faced with the unpleasant surprise of male factor infertility, they at least had that much in common with you. They - especially the men - probably shared many of your same objections or concerns initially, but somehow made it to the decision to use DS anyway. Do you think it would be a good choice (for the individuals, for the marriage, for the family) if the road to choosing the DS option was paved by the man giving, conceding, surrendering, capitulating, bending to just short of his breaking point, or whatever other adversarial way you care to phrase it? If that is how they got to the choice, how do you think that might affect that family's future, compared to another DS family where the option was truly accepted?


If you *still* think of the donor as "the lucky man who gets to create a child with [your] wife," then donor sperm is not for you. The donor's role begins and ends with providing a gamete that you can't. He has no relationship with your wife and she doesn't want one with him. He has no relationship with your child, and unless you opt for open donation - which seems very unlikely in your case - almost certainly never will. Even in the remote chance that the donor and your child did have some sort of contact, it would come many years into your child's life, during which time you will build and experience strong family bonds. Those bonds won't just be because you're living "like" a family, but because you'll be an honest-to-goodness-just-like-any-other family. If you do not see all this, and only see the donor as a "lucky man" who will be "with your wife" and "part of the family", then you have a grossly distorted notion of the donor-donee relationship. If you think such a relationship is automatic and inevitable, then you're ignoring abundant evidence from other DS families that it doesn't work that way, and if you think it's all those other DS families that are deluding themselves, that's an indirect insult to their judgment. There is no relationship; it is a transaction.

I'm very sympathetic to your history and it makes sense why you can't just flip a switch and be accepting of things you're not conditioned to accept, but if you can't accept these things, don't do donor sperm. If you go down this road because you surrender, or because you feel it's your duty, or because you think your marriage might fail otherwise, it will not end the stress and heartache you feel. At best, it will just defer it for a while, but if you think it's bad now, it'll be a lot worse and with much more at stake when your unresolved feelings are felt toward an actual donor family that's yours, not just a hypothetical one.


How about the wife who, by your current point of view, will have an undeniable relationship with some lucky man who isn't you? Even if you accept the child, is it pure rubbish to hear your perspective and worry that you might end up resenting or even rejecting your wife? Again, these sound like betrayal issues, not genetic link issues.


Has your counselor ever talked to you about "distorted thinking"? (It's probably more of a topic for one-on-one counseling, but if she hasn't raised it, it might be worth exploring.) It may sound like an insult if you don't know what the phrase means in psychological usage, but it's not meant that way. It's a shorthand way of referring to several common distortions in how people think about things in ways that aren't very constructive. For example, check out 15 Styles of Distorted Thinking . If you look over that list, and then look over your posts again, I think a lot of those thought patterns will could apply. Distorted thinking can be overcome, but if you never address it, distorted thinking just leads to distorted decisions.

As always, I wish you the best.

Look, I can't help it if that's how I come off in my posts. I tend to write in stream of consciousness, which means that many of my posts come off as highly charged because, at the time, they are. Remember, I haven't had as much time as many people have to come to terms with all of this.

And ya know what? Yeah, maybe I do fee la little bit betrayed by my wife, because it seems like it is just important that she have a baby, no matter who it is by? Also, as I mentioned to her after one particularly arduous session, if the roles were reversed and it caused her this much pain, I would LONG AGO have stopped the whole thing. And also, I admit that I feel a little confused that I am told that I must accept the donor as part of my family, yet whenever I bring up the topic that DW will be creating a child with another man's sperm she gets upset and cuts me off, and there is no rebuke fomr the counselor. If I have to accept it and say it aloud, then so should she. She gets to actually say in the sessions that she will 'pretend it is my sperm' and that we can 'pretend it is just like adoption'. Yet if I posit something like that, I get a litany of reasons why it is no good.

As far as the 'lucky man', yeah, I think I am 100% ok with calling him that, because he has something that I do not, for whatever reason. Just like many people consider me lucky for other things that I have in my life. There is nothing wrong with my feeling that way. At least he doesnt have to hear his wife, partner, etc (if he has one) say how things may have been different if she knew he was sterile from the get-go.
As far as phrasing things in an adversarial way, how else would you describe it when on major points the counselor and my wife are united, and I am the one who has to give? How many times can you go back to that well? I clicked through to your link, and to be honest, I do see plenty of examples there not jsut of my thinking, but of my wife's as well.

I've done some thinking over the past day or so, and I think this will be my last day here. As with everything else in this process, I started with the best of intentions and hopes. But, not to worry, I am sure that many people going forward will benefit from your copious wisdom. You sure do seem to have everything figured out.

[SFBaygirl]

Boston: I think you made some really important points in that last post. You mentioned that many of us have had time to deal with this. For myself and DH that is very true. We got the diagnosis about 4 years ago and were barely 30 at the time. This puts us in a very different situation.

Furthermore, this is the first marriage for both DH and I and we have no history of the infidelity you suffered to bring baggage to this already incredibly sucky ordeal.

You are also feeling tremendous time pressure due to your wife's age.

I still feel that it isn't so much the fact that you have to use DS but that you are being a bit rushed into it. If this process is going to happen I can't help but feel that more time is going to be needed bio-clock or not. 6-12 months for you to gain the acceptance you need is not the end of the world.

It is certainly possible that you may never get there, DS truly isn't for everyone and that is OK.

I sincerely wish you the best and hope you find peace one day soon.

Chris.

[anilorak13ska]

bostonyankee - I'm sorry that you are feeling this way, but as you say, it is totally natural. You can't help the way you feel, no matter how much we try to intellectualize how you "should" feel. We can't tell you that.

I have tried to be supportive of your decision to at least pursue the idea of ds, even though I said from the beginning that I would not do it. I wouldn't use ds, nor would I use donor eggs. Nor would I use a surrogate. And even the options I WAS considering I ended up abandoning in the end (nc-ivf, embryo adoption, newborn adoption!).

This whole thing is a process, and I think it is good that you are distancing yourself from us seeming know-it-alls. It's easy to say what the "answer" is when you're not the person it pertains to. Even if we had similar experiences, we didn't have the exact same ones, or the exact same combination of them.

Even if you stay away from the boards, I truly do hope you come back one last time to let us know how this got resolved for you.

Wishing you lots of peace and joy and love in your marriage.

[AllDeliveriesNoBaby]

Hey everyone! Just thought I would come to check in, but I must say that I had hoped I would find this particular forum in better spirits. Nevertheless, I must say that I have said from the beginning that I think there are deeper issues here for you, Boston. I commend AzooDude in his tell-it-how-it-is fashion. Sometimes that is what needs to be done. I think it is pretty safe to say that Boston doesn't feel comfortable with DS and that his wife isn't willing to accept that at this point. So, instead of dancing around the issue and trying to convince eachother of how wrong/right the other one is, just call it quits for now when it comes to infertility. Otherwise, you will both end up resentful. Decide what other options there are (i.e. living childless and being happy). Sometimes you just have to take all the focus off of the issue. Why prolong the pain for either of you??

[littleblue]

hi everyone, sorry i haven't been talkative on the forum but i have been so busy with my new job. and i'm actually starting to like working there now so i'm feeling better about it. the children are really comfortable with me now and i'm not thinking about IF when i'm with them anymore. it was hard the first month to be surrounded by so many sweet children and feeling so empty inside myself.

i'm not sure what changed, but my stress level has dropped and i'm enjoying their company all of a sudden. i think once you stop fighting the situation everything starts to relax and make sense. i'm not a jealous person and i shouldn't let other's good fortune turn me bad.

boston: i think you know where you are going with everything. i have reading along with you the whole time and i think you know what is best for yourself and your marriage. there really isn't any need for counseling at this point that i can see (just my opinion). let your wife down gently and continue on with your life plans and adoption options or what have you. please i really think we share a mind about DS, i can't accept DS in any way shape or form. i think you should stay away from it as well. you already know this in your heart and have been saying it all along. as a friend i would tell you to quit talking about it and go on with life.

[AzooDude]

Originally Posted by anilorak13ska

Are you by chance a psychotherapist? And if so, are you available for online consultations? (I'm only half kidding!)

Nope, I'm one of those people who knows "just enough to be dangerous" from a combo of an undergrad psych degree and having some experience on the receiving end of psychological services. I don't fancy myself an expert, though, so to the extent I've got that know-it-all thing happening in my posts, it's more from the way I write than thinking I'm super-qualified. If it helps soften it, imagine that practically every sentence I write has an invisible "In my opinion..." or "I think that..." appended to it. I usually omit such hedging phrases because it would weaken the writing if I included them as often as they apply, but I tend to read that in to what other people write, so I count on them doing the same for me. Except for an odd fact here and there, almost all conversation is just opinion, right?

Originally Posted by bostonyankee

Look, I can't help it if that's how I come off in my posts. I tend to write in stream of consciousness, which means that many of my posts come off as highly charged because, at the time, they are. Remember, I haven't had as much time as many people have to come to terms with all of this.

Boston, you're defending (unnecessarily) the "how" of your posts, but it's not your style or tone that I was talking about. I'm talking about the "what" - the substance. Like everyone else, you're entitled to feel what you feel, and express what you want to express, or leave out the parts you don't want to express. This thread is a conversation, though, and one in which you have reached out for support and others are reaching toward you trying to offer it. What I was trying to get you to see is that if you keep saying nearly the exact same thing, failing to acknowledge other people's specific replies to concerns you've raised, or to answer questions when people try to draw out more detail of what you mean, that's frustrating to those of us (well, me, at least, but I assume I'm not unique) trying to support you.

The pattern here is you say X. Someone responds about X, sharing their opinions, insights, or experience with X. You then say you didn't mean X, you actually meant Y. A couple sentences or posts later, you say X again, sometimes verbatim, and the cycle repeats.

A prime example of what I'm talking about is the recurring statement that you can't accept that a sperm donor would be a biological part of your family. It's not the refusal or even the fact that you repeat it that's frustrating, but that you keep repeating it *the same way*, without addressing what others have said on that point. The feeling itself is completely normal and something most folks considering donors have to come to terms with, so no one is faulting you for that feeling, but boston, what is it that *you* mean by "accept" or "part of the family"? Because you haven't given us much to go on.

Originally Posted by bostonyankee

And ya know what? Yeah, maybe I do fee la little bit betrayed by my wife, because it seems like it is just important that she have a baby, no matter who it is by?

"Seems" is the important word there. I don't know your wife, and I'll concede that for some women (or men, for that matter), having a baby, any baby, might be the most important thing no matter how they come by it. From what you've described, though, and the fact that you have a wife going to counseling about this stuff with you, it sounds like your wife is like most other women (or men) in this situation, who want a baby, sure, but what they really, really want, no matter what it takes, is to be a parent with the person they chose as a spouse. If she's that kind of woman, then your full participation and "blessing" (for lack of a better word) are important, and you are not just the optional accessory that you're making yourself out to be. If your wife hasn't made you out to be that way, either, then it's not very constructive (to put it mildly) to act as though you know her mind better than she does. If she does feel that way, then it's understandable you'd be afraid for the marriage, but I think it would argue pretty powerfully *against* going the donor sperm route. Donor sperm is an infertility treatment, not a marriage saver.

Originally Posted by bostonyankee

Also, as I mentioned to her after one particularly arduous session, if the roles were reversed and it caused her this much pain, I would LONG AGO have stopped the whole thing.

In the hypothetical role reversal, is she already a mother from a previous marriage, while you'd be giving up your last chance of ever being a father?

Originally Posted by bostonyankee

And also, I admit that I feel a little confused that I am told that I must accept the donor as part of my family, yet whenever I bring up the topic that DW will be creating a child with another man's sperm she gets upset and cuts me off, and there is no rebuke fomr the counselor. If I have to accept it and say it aloud, then so should she. She gets to actually say in the sessions that she will 'pretend it is my sperm' and that we can 'pretend it is just like adoption'. Yet if I posit something like that, I get a litany of reasons why it is no good.

If you feel like the opportunity to talk and urging to see "the other side" is completely one-sided, then change counselors. We only know what you tell us, but if you express yourself in your sessions anything like you express yourself here, then I often wonder if you're failing to notice how big a subtle difference in word choice makes. For example, saying, "You're having a baby with another man," would imply infidelity and marginalization that's not present in the phrase, "You're having a baby with another man's sperm." Along the same lines, if you stick to some idiosyncratic definition of what "accept" means, never exploring what that means, then you could be stubbornly refusing to do something no one is asking or expecting you to do.

Originally Posted by bostonyankee, in response to aniloriak

In terms of the donor being the lucky guy, I meant that he has something (sperm) that I wish that I had.

Originally Posted by bostonyankee, in response to AzooDude

As far as the 'lucky man', yeah, I think I am 100% ok with calling him that, because he has something that I do not, for whatever reason. Just like many people consider me lucky for other things that I have in my life.

If what you meant was that a sperm donor is lucky because he has sperm, no biggie. But that is not what you wrote. You wrote: "I will never be able to hand-select the lucky man who gets to create a child with my wife." That goes well beyond a general feeling that any man with sperm is a lucky man compared to you, and only makes sense if meant just what it sounded like, which was was that you would consider a particular sperm donor lucky for getting to create a child with your wife. That's the kind of comment (just one of many) that makes me believe that you're not a man struggling with donor sperm issues as much as you are a man struggling with betrayal issues. I'm not asserting or even implying that you are somehow defective because of that, or not trying hard enough, or anything like that, but if you insist on brushing the real issues under the rug, you could be headed for some very bad decisions.

Originally Posted by bostonyankee

As far as phrasing things in an adversarial way, how else would you describe it when on major points the counselor and my wife are united, and I am the one who has to give?

I assume that comment is in response to the part where I asked: "Do you think it would be a good choice (for the individuals, for the marriage, for the family) if the road to choosing the DS option was paved by the man giving, conceding, surrendering, capitulating, bending to just short of his breaking point, or whatever other adversarial way you care to phrase it?"

Instead of considering or responding to that hypothetical question I asked about other couples in your situation, you jumped right back to defending your way of looking at it (adversarially) as the *only* way. I'm not telling you your way is wrong for you, but it *is not* the only way these things go; the donor option is mutually chosen by many couples without getting there by being on opposite sides and one side finally surrendering to the other. There probably are times when couples go that route with one spouse feeling coerced, and that sounds more like where you're headed, but I'm asking, does that sound like a good idea? Whether the process is adversarial or not is up to you, but I think before you can come around to a more cooperative state of mind, it's necessary to recognize that it's even a possibility.

Originally Posted by bostonyankee

I've done some thinking over the past day or so, and I think this will be my last day here.

Do what's best for you, but I hope if you're calling it quits here that it's not for feeling like I or anyone else stopped being on your side. You came looking for understanding and support and I think that's what you got. If you decide not to pursue DS because you can't make your peace with it, I think everyone here supports that. If you decide to pursue DS because you *can* make peace with it, we'd support that, too. If you're looking for people to support you going through with DS for bad reasons, or despite serious objections you don't expect to overcome, then that would be pretty destructive support.

Originally Posted by bostonyankee

But, not to worry, I am sure that many people going forward will benefit from your copious wisdom. You sure do seem to have everything figured out.

I refer you back to the first paragraph.

[littleblue]

Originally Posted by bostonyankee

As far as the 'lucky man', yeah, I think I am 100% ok with calling him that, because he has something that I do not, for whatever reason. Just like many people consider me lucky for other things that I have in my life. There is nothing wrong with my feeling that way.

I've done some thinking over the past day or so, and I think this will be my last day here. As with everything else in this process, I started with the best of intentions and hopes. But, not to worry, I am sure that many people going forward will benefit from your copious wisdom. You sure do seem to have everything figured out.

hi boston I understand your "lucky guy" comments. when everything (or at least our favorite reproductive things) are in normal working order i consider that very lucky, blessed, healthy and fortunate ect... it is almost impossible (or at least not common) for a person without IF to understand their own luck and blessed state of being. we here can see their blessed state all too well.

boston you will be missed on the forum. for me it has been wonderful to read and think from your point of view. i think reading the comments here have helped me try to understand my own husband and what he is going through. like many IF wives i felt like rushing into a solution (scared into action after the diagnosis), i was nearly desperate for a pregnancy and a magic pill or some timeline for my husband's IF. i thought i was helping. i am so glad i do not feel like this any more and now take the time to let us deal with the whole process and possible situations before diving into something we honestly don't even understand yet. i have let my husband know that i am serious about our family, but able to wait for him at the same time. i love my marriage too much and i feel like we are a lucky couple to have each other. i wouldn't give him up for anything, not even for a cute little pink baby.

[jtonnis]

I am so sorry for how you are feeling. I, too, am in my second marriage and my husband knew that I had infertility issues when we got married. I even tried to talk him out of marrying me because I know how badly he wants a large family. I feel like a failure as a woman because my body doesn't work the way a woman's is supposed to. But, I know that my husband loves me and that we will have more children. We have one son, through adoption, and it was the most incredible experience of my life! There couldn't be a mommy and son more bonded than my son and I. Family, friends, and his teachers at school all comment on how close we are as a family. I say all of this because I'm wondering if you've considered adoption? It is another alternative to building your family. For me, it has nothing to do with DNA or having a biological child. Trust me, when you have that baby, biology makes no difference at ALL!!

By the way, what makes a man a real man is whether or not he takes care of his wife and family. YOU are doing that! Good job, man!

[jtonnis]

Honestly, I am new to the forum and I didn't realize that there were 26 pages of posts on this thread. I responded to the first page, but had I read all the posts, my response would have been different. Since this is a post that is no longer active, I will leave it at that. Best of luck, boston.