How to move forward when we don’t agree as a couple?

How to move forward when we don’t agree as a couple.
I love the way this question is phrased – And in my opinion the key word here is WHEN.
What I mean by that is that sooner or later it is going to happen. We are at some point going to disagree on something – whether it is decision we need to make about moving to the next stage of treatment, a choice point, a priority we need to set, what comes first what comes later, timing, sharing of our fertility situation with friends and family, up to what stage are we willing to travel this journey, when do we stop…
There are many decisions and choice points involved in fertility challenges, and they can become relationship challenges
There is something we need to understand here that would be useful to remember every time we disagree with our partner
Every one of us is unique – biologically and psychologically.
The way we have been brought up by our family, our schooling, our friends, the where and when of our lives, our beliefs and values, form our subjective model of the world.
Thus, agreeing with someone on everything, would be a statistical miracle, no matter how close we are to them.
The idea here is to have RESPECT for each other’s model of the world and to keep the bridges of communications open.
That is why in many occasions with couples facing fertility challenges we work together just doing that: They learn and re-learn how to communicate. How to build communication skills, and bridges.
Becoming effective communicators and active listeners are very useful skills not only in our relationship with our partner but in any life context – at work, with our families, with our friends, even with ourselves!
Two tips –
Be curious about understanding and finding the logic in your partners illogic
With no judgement. Just curiosity about the positive intention behind their behaviour. That is a good place to start.
Second tip: Remember and keep reminding each other what is your ultimate goal and vision as a couple and as a family. This will keep you aligned and true to your shared mission and dream.

Unfortunately, it’s not always going to be the case that you and your partner are going to agree on something during infertility. There are so many choices and decisions to be made that it’s normal that you won’t always come to the table at the same time and be ready to make the same decision. How do you move forward in those situations? Sometimes it truly is a case of time; for example, if you’re considering an alternative route to parenthood, it’s really important that you allow that time for the other partner to work through some of the emotions and thoughts around that before coming back together to see over making some decisions. Time is a really important one, and to have the patience to allow that – allow your partner the space to be able to do that.

Another key tool is active listening; because often we don’t get the chance to really get to the crux of the emotions and thoughts around it so your partner may suggest a reason that they don’t want to go ahead with, a certain test or a certain route but it may not be the absolute crux of it. I think what you can do is sit down together and really actively listen, and that’s very different to a normal conversation. It’s where you don’t interrupt and you prompt and continue to prompt, so you say “anything else?”, “anything else”, “anything else?”, and you are just listening, you are not actively coming forward with solutions or anything at that stage. Then you swap so you are then being asked by your partner how you feel about this and being allowed that full space to do that. What I often find is that as you dig deeper and you say “anything else?”, and “anything else?” you really get to what the absolute true cause of that disagreement is so that can be a really powerful exercise for you to do.

You can also get external support. Don’t be afraid to reach out to a relationship therapist to help you work through these differences. I think the other thing to explore is consequences if you do choose to move forward without the other person’s consent or full agreement. If we were asked the questions “if we are to go ahead, how would you feel, what would you do?”, etc. I think it’s really important to explore all of this fully together as best you can and seek external support to get to the crux of the issue if need be.

If you’re in a position where, there’s a difference of opinion in a couple then I would really advise seeking additional support in terms of counselling or maybe implications counselling if were talking about going down a donor route or having different types of treatment because often that third party can help you have a different perspective on what’s going on and it could well be that the pair of you are too close to the situation to make really any kind of progress. It can also be a lack of understanding from one part of different fears, concerns and perceptions of other people. I think it’s really worthwhile seeking advice from a professional who can maybe help you understand how to have some of those difficult conversations because often you may get caught up in what other people think about these decisions that you’re making. Part of the fear might be how do we tell our parents, or how do we tell our friends, relatives or the other people that you might be getting worried about when actually it’s down to the pair of you. So ask for help, seek advice and then you can talk this through better

I think it can be quite distressing if couples don’t agree or they find themselves not on the same page as each other because I think, ordinarily, in a partnership, we learn to sort of like work with each other and find ways that we can negotiate and navigate our way through various decisions that we have to make in life and maybe there might be differences but I guess they’re not as kind of raw or hyper sensitized as the whole business of trying for baby which is really kind of like the feelings are very very not exaggerated but really kind of can become extreme and so therefore little disagreements might cause more distress and also men and women will seem to me, in my experience, to go through this process quite differently. People go through things differently. Grieving processes, some people are up and about very quickly after their husband dies, other people five years later, they’re still grieving, mourning. It’s like everybody is very different but within the couple like if there’s disagreements that, well, there can first of all be differences like differences in approach like maybe the man might be very optimistic and positive, the woman is feeling anxious and worried and by being very positive towards her trying to help, with the best will, he’s trying to be help her be positive, she can feel unheard because her distress and her pain, her anxiety and her worries and her fears are not being acknowledged because he’s just saying “oh it’ll happen. don’t you worry, we’ll get a baby one day, it’ll be all right in the end, don’t you worry” and she’s like “yeah but I am worried because it might not ever happen and how do it’s going to happen, you can’t cut, you’ve got no guarantees” so, that can be tricky to work out those differences. There may be differences in like if she’s really keen on doing all the supplements and don’t drink and don’t smoke and do all of everything right, organic vegetables and don’t use this sort of shampoo and all the different things that are very very current which she looks at on the internet and reads on these forums which he’s not reading and that’s another gender difference. The women are often the ones that are in there doing all the researching and everything and chaps tend not to lend themselves to doing that and that in itself can cause a difficulty like: “why are you always on google? Why are you always reading stuff? it only upsets you” and she’s like “well, why don’t you google it with me? you don’t know anything! you don’t want to know anything! you don’t research anything like I do; is it that you don’t care” and so, that can cause a bit of friction and rub between them and then maybe there’s like differences in how they respond if it doesn’t work. Like if they have a treatment cycle and she’s distraught and distressed for days, if not weeks and he bounces back very quickly and he goes to work and he’s fine and he can distract himself much more easily and she’s still really upset that can cause a difficulty because he doesn’t understand why she’s being so upset all the time and she doesn’t understand why he can seemingly be getting over it so quickly and that can cause a bit of friction because they just are different and they don’t understand each other and she thinks “if only you could understand, you felt like me, we would be we would be happier” and he thinks “well, if only you’d be like me, we’d be happier” and so there has to be this understanding between them and I think, I do a lot of work with couples and I think maybe if there’s a lot of stress and strain is good to have a bit of couples counseling – not because there’s anything wrong, not because the relationship is flawed, not because there’s any problem fundamentally in the relationship – is because there are these difficulties in communication style in understanding each other and I think it can be really helpful to find a neutral safe kind of place where she can say her thing and he can hear it without getting wanting to shut her down and he can say what he feels about, how her distresses him and how he wants her to be happy and they can share what they’re feeling and maybe understand each other better and this get the differences, normalized and if they realize “well, this is okay that we’re different, it’s all right we don’t have to be the same” and also little techniques of communication can he listen to her a bit more, can he give her a hug and let her cry rather than trying to quite stop her from being distraught. Yes, so there’s a lot of differences about what to do, how much treatment to have, how much, when to stop. In my experience, if I’m honest and this is a generalization and of course, it doesn’t apply to every man and every woman but generally speaking women drive the procreative process in my in my experience and they will want to go on and on and on and try and try everything really and find it very difficult to give up. Whereas the chap, is more likely to be able to say “all right, maybe we should stop now, maybe we should consider stopping” and that can cause or a lot of a lot of stress between them and she will often think “he doesn’t care” and actually he cares just as deeply, just as profoundly, just as painfully about the whole thing as her but he’s got a different way of viewing it and thinking about it and in all honesty, if I was to be honest, men would be more likely to give up sooner than women. I would say on the whole so that causes a little bit of a rub. It’s like how do we do another cycle, do we do another cycle and men also are thinking more about the finances perhaps and women are more likely just wanting the baby so, there is such a difference and so I would say definitely, it’s good to talk to a fertility special counsellor, specialist who understands these things and can help you kind of navigate your way through which is unfamiliar waters.  It can be very distressing and upsetting if you feel you’re not on the same page as each other.