Why Support From Friends Can Fade During an IVF Journey
By Saff Mitten
One of the hardest parts of infertility and IVF is the emotional impact it has on you. Most of us are completely unprepared for just how psychologically demanding the experience can become, and it is only natural to want the support of friends and family as you try to navigate it.
However, getting that support is not always straightforward.
There can already be a barrier to feeling understood by people who have never experienced it themselves, simply because it is such a uniquely challenging experience.
Unlike many of life's other significant challenges, infertility is an experience that relatively few people have lived through themselves.
Many people simply do not have a frame of reference for what it is really like or how it feels to live through it.
Whilst friends may have their own experiences of grief, relationship breakdown, redundancy or losing a loved one, infertility and IVF are different. As a result, people often don't know what to say, how much to ask, whether mentioning it will upset you, or whether giving you space is the kinder thing to do.
In the beginning, this may not feel so apparent. Friends will often rally around because they assume IVF is likely to work, and that this difficult period will be relatively short-lived. They check in, offer encouragement, send messages before treatment, celebrate hopeful moments with you, and understand when you decline invitations or become less socially available because IVF has become such a significant part of your life.
But there is something else that can make this journey particularly difficult.
Many people assume IVF is the solution to infertility. They imagine it as something you go through for a few months and then it will probably work.
We rarely hear about those for whom IVF doesn't work, or those who endure years of treatment, repeated disappointments, pregnancy loss, embryo loss, uncertainty and grief. However, the reality is that for a lot of people, IVF is not a straightforward path. It can involve multiple treatment cycles, repeated hope followed by heartbreak, changing goalposts, impossible decisions, and no guarantee that it will result in having a baby.
It is only when you begin IVF that you truly experience how difficult and emotionally gruelling it can be. Unless you have an easy and straightforward journey with it, it is often entirely different from what you anticipated, and far, far harder. It is also incredibly different from how your friends perceive it, not having been through it themselves.
Trying to explain this can be difficult. Trying to explain what it actually feels like can be even harder. It is such a profoundly difficult experience emotionally that it can be hard to put into words.
Over time, many people begin protecting themselves as a result.
You may pull back slightly because talking about infertility leaves you feeling vulnerable. You may want to enjoy time with friends without your fertility struggles becoming the focus of every conversation. You may simply want to feel a little more like yourself for an evening.
You may start feeling bored of yourself because your own life feels so stuck and so limited by treatment, waiting and uncertainty... and you don't want your friends to become bored of you too.
At times you may also put on a brave face. You tell people you're OK when you're not. You minimise how difficult things have become because you don't want infertility to define you or become the only thing people associate with you. You don't want people to think every conversation with you has to be heavy and full of difficult emotions.
Yet alongside this sits another longing.
You still want your friends to care.
You want them to ask how you are. You want them to remember important appointments. You want them to reach out after disappointing news.
You want them to still invite you to things, even if you aren't likely to go.
You also want them to just show up and offer their support without you having to ask.
Unfortunately, this doesn't always happen.
Sometimes people simply follow your lead. If you stop talking about IVF as much, they may assume you no longer want to discuss it.
Sometimes they become increasingly unsure what to say as the disappointments continue. They have never experienced anything quite like this themselves. They don't understand the emotional complexity of living with prolonged uncertainty, repeated loss, and the experience of hope turning into something painful and frightening.
They know you are hurting. They don't want to make things worse. And they also know they can't make it better, which can leave them feeling helpless. So they may struggle to know what to say or do.
Unfortunately, many people also have a tendency to say nothing when someone is going through something emotionally challenging that they don't understand. This often comes from not knowing what to say rather than not caring.
However, silence can feel incredibly painful and isolating.
When nobody asks how you are, acknowledges another failed cycle, or engages with what you are living through, it can be easy to experience that silence as rejection, disinterest, or a lack of care, even when this wasn't the intention.
You may begin wondering whether people are tired of hearing about IVF.
You may worry that you have become a burden.
You may wonder whether people don't really want to spend time with you anymore because you never seem to have anything positive to share.
You may begin to internalise it and feel like you have done something wrong.
Your friends may be trying to protect you by not bringing it up.
You may be trying to protect yourself by not talking about it.
The unintended consequence is that both of you become quieter around the very thing that most needs acknowledgement.
For many friendships, this creates distance rather than closeness.
Unfortunately, it is also important to acknowledge that some friendships do change or drift away altogether.
Sometimes this is because people simply do not have the emotional capacity to stay alongside someone through years of uncertainty and pain.
Sometimes friends genuinely care but begin to feel that the friendship has become one-sided.
They may understand that infertility has left you with very little emotional capacity. They may appreciate why you no longer show up in the way you once did.
At the same time, they may also miss the friendship you once had together. They may miss having you more present in their lives, available to support them, or able to participate in the friendship as you once did. They may miss your old friendship dynamic - particularly if you were the one who often used to be checking in and helping support them with what they were going through.
These are difficult feelings for people to admit, particularly when they know how much you are already carrying.
As a result, they often remain unspoken. Communication becomes less frequent and the friendship gradually begins to drift.
This can leave you grieving something you never expected IVF and infertility to take from you.
Whilst some friendships deepen during an IVF and infertility journey, others become more complicated. Not always because either person has stopped caring, but because infertility is such a unique, prolonged and emotionally demanding experience that it can be incredibly difficult for two people to navigate together when only one of them is living it every day.
This is one of the reasons I think therapy can be particularly helpful and important. This is such a uniquely difficult experience to go through and can feel incredibly isolating and lonely even with friends showing up for you. So when you experience support from friends fading, or friendships changing, drifting or ending, it can compound that sense of loneliness and isolation, making everything feel harder.
Having therapy with someone like myself who has lived through this experience, and knows what it is like to navigate it, can be helpful in offering you the support you desperately need and want. And importantly, it can help you to feel understood and validated in what you are going through, because like you, I have been there myself and I know how hard it can be.
If this article resonated with you…
I'm Saff Mitten, a specialist counsellor and psychotherapist supporting women through IVF, infertility and miscarriage.
My approach is shaped by my professional training and experience, together with the personal understanding I bring from my own journey through IVF, infertility and miscarriage.
Through both my therapeutic work and my writing, I explore the emotional and psychological impact of these experiences to help women make sense of feelings that can often be difficult to put into words and feel less alone.
If you're looking for support with infertility, IVF or miscarriage, you can follow the link below to learn more about how I support women through these experiences. I work online and support women across the UK.