To feel that supportive relationships are a form of privilege

[Brood]

I got my operation for my third round of egg retrieval about ten days ago. Unfortunately, there was an extremely rare complication where they could only access one of my ovaries and I ended up needing extra tests due to something that went wrong during the procedure. I felt devastated as I had no awareness this could even happen. I knew immediately when I woke up that something had gone wrong because the pad I was lying on contained a lot of blood which I had never seen on previous occasions and there was a very sombre atmosphere and lots of waiting.

The explanation I got was that our internal body parts are constantly moving around and sometimes they move out of reach. This resulted in me going home with all the mature eggs still in one of my ovaries.

Afterwards I was extremely swollen and sore and bleeding for days. But since then, the swelling hasn’t gone down - I look about 6 months pregnant - feel exhausted, unwell, I feel overly full after eating, headachey, my breasts are very tender, and I’m starting to wonder if something else has gone wrong. I don’t know if anyone has any experience with this process. I just remember the recovery time being pretty quick and straight forward previously, but then I never went home with all my eggs still inside one of my ovaries before.

The other thing is this has been having an impact on my mood. I felt super alone watching couples in the waiting room of the fertility clinic, seeing men arrive to pick up their partners, men in the waiting room (I hate seeing men in the waiting room - it feels so triggering). Everyone in my workplace is engaged or happily married and while I love my own company, I’m starting to wonder what am I missing that I can’t find anyone who wants to be with me. There’s a podcast I listen to and the speaker talks about her struggles but she has a very supportive partner, according to her she has perfect kids that she easily got pregnant with & a solid family and even a very supportive ex partner. I don’t think people like this can truly understand how life is when you don’t have any support. I listen to her talk about how difficult life is but I wonder does she get how privileged she is.. She has never had to do anything alone.

Part of the definition of privilege is that privileged people don’t know they have it. I wonder how well people giving advice to others would do without the security of knowing they are loved and of having that solid support system behind them. This woman talks about privilege all the time without ever recognising her own. Are people really taking a risk by speaking vulnerably or counter culturally when they have a band of cheerleaders behind them who all think the same?

My work colleagues have the privilege of soaring self confidence knowing they have been accepted and loved in their long term relationships . I see how their partners bring their cars to be serviced, pack them lunch and do the grocery shopping for them, pay half or all of the rent, drive them on trips, help coordinate their schedule, make them dinner, make them feel special on their birthdays. Good for them, but they cannot have any idea of what it’s like to need to be everything for yourself all the time, to have to do the work of all those supporting roles alone. I wish the world would recognise this privilege. I know these are two different subjects, but they’re kind of the same. I don’t have anyone in the waiting room or at home, or to do my shopping or make me dinner or look after me. I am trying to figure out how to have a baby alone, buy a house alone, build a career alone. I often have to take annual leave because I have no one to call on for little things like getting my car serviced. A few months ago, I couldn’t drive due to an operation and I had no support at all with basic daily needs. My work colleagues take for granted that support is there. There are just millions of little ways having a support system makes life so much easier, and anyone who has that is truly privileged.

I am often judged for not having everything in order but I’m juggling everything myself. We all don’t have the same hours in the day as Beyonce when Beyonce has a team of people who take loads off her and free up plenty of extra time. I am judged for trying to figure out who is worth dating while my colleagues have extremely high standards because they’ve been lucky enough to have been loved that way. I feel I have done more work on myself than most and unfortunately, things still don’t work out & people with good supporting partners and families are blind to how much more smoothly their life runs because of other people and have so little insight into that privilege

Am I being unreasonable to feel so isolated in feeling that no one understands this?

Agreed. OP, sorry, but you are talking nonsense. I sympathise with your struggle, it sounds like you've been through a lot, but this is not the definition of privilege and to say it is undermines what the word 'privilege' actually means.

Very similar here - I just put my mother in a nursing home after seven years as her carer. My only sibling lives nearly 2000 kilometres away, so obviously wasn't involved. That's it, that's my whole family. I had good fortune in living where there are decent support services for aged care (Australian city) and am thankful for it, but privilege? Hardly.

Completely agree. Some women do very well raising a child alone, through circumstances or choice - I don't think the OP is in the mental place to be taking it on.

I don't think people are objecting to the OP discussing loneliness. Had they just talked about being lonely and having to go for their IVF on their own, people would have certainly offered a virtual hand of support.

It's the generalised weaponising of 'privilege' and shaking it like a stick at people just because people are in a partnership that the OP isn't, and lecturing us all about how privileged we are and don't know it. Not the best way to get people on-side.

I would say it’s luck OP not privilege, privilege is something given to you unearned must for being born where/who/how you are. I met my DH through sheer luck.

I get it must be really difficult for you and at times lonely and I’m sorry you are feeling this way. It is really hard to find someone these days, I know a fair few single women who are just bloody fantastic but never found anyone to settle down with. It really is luck.

I have sympathy with the OP for her IVF struggles and going through that alone. But what put my back up was her moan about other people's 'priviledge' how incredibly judgemental. Saying they don't know what it's like to have to go through life alone how the hell do you know. How do you know the colleague in a loving secure relationship hasn't spent the last 20 years single. Or the colleague with a lovely partner now didn't escape an abusive relationship getting the shit kicked out of them for years. You've made a snap judgement of people and labelled it priviledge. Your envious and jealous of them that's it. But as others have said it's your choice to have ivf alone and its an incredibly privileged choice to have. Plenty can't.

I think you are experiencing jealousy.
The very fact that you are in a position to make a choice to have IVF, as a single woman in fact, makes you privileged.

I get it OP. I have a wonderful husband but we weren’t able to have children. When we were going through IVF I thought couples who could just go to bed and make a baby were incredibly privileged when I was having to have two injections a day and endless blood tests and internal scans, I started feeling like a piece of meat.

I hope the IVF works.

Envy and, possibly, an unrealistic idea of what IVF and single motherhood (if the treatment is successful) will demand. I hope OP isn't thinking of a baby as a cure for loneliness - for her sake and the child's.

When the term privilege was used with meaning it was in the context of anti-racism, when people were making the point that white people weren't just lucky: they didn't just have unearned advantages. They had unearned advantages that amounted to social injustice because they were enforced by a society systematically stacked in their favour.

Now, on MN at least, the term seems to be used for anyone who has good fortune, or anyone who makes the speaker feel that they are somehow marginalised.

Everyone has a mixture of good and bad luck, OP. I sympathise with how difficult the IVF is, but it is a course that you have chosen. Unlike an involuntarily pregnant woman coping with pregnancy alone; or a woman who wants a child but can't afford IVF.

And those supportive relationships you envy? Don't strip them of nuance. Most relationships are a mosaic of good luck and bad luck, and many women who have children with partners find themselves to be in some respects alone and cornered by a dynamic that places ridiculously unfair burdens on them compared with their partners.

I can't help thinking that the way you formulate your unhappiness is a spin-out from identity politics. You don't have to construct an identity for yourself as the member of some socially disadvantaged group in order to make a claim to have your suffering heard.

Everyone deserves compassion -- as individuals going through tough times. You deserve compassion, as a single person going through IVF. But don't base that right on resentment and envy of others, whom you arbitrarily categorise as members of groups that are less in need of the same basic respect.

I’m very sorry you’re going through a difficult time. I do agree there can be luck involved in people finding loving, supportive relationships but I don’t think privilege is the right word and I think anyone can feel lonely and unsupported, regardless of their relationship status. I am lucky enough to have a loving, supportive DH but I am still very lonely. I have no family support. My DH works long hours so I look after our baby alone the majority of the time, and it is lonely. I also have pretty severe social anxiety which has stopped me having any friends since I was about 10 years old. Going on dates to find someone to be in a relationship was the hardest thing I ever did, but I forced myself to do it because I wanted a husband and a family so badly. So while I was lucky to find my lovely DH, I definitely didn’t just fall into a relationship with no time or effort from me.

I understand your frustration to a degree. I was (pretty much) single until I was 30, whilst watching all my friends get married and start families. It was lonely watching everyone else with their husbands and families so I do understand that perspective, but I wouldn’t call it privilege as much as simply circumstances.

We all have different “privileges” from beauty, to wealth, to intelligence, to varying relationships with friends, family and partners. Some of these things we can impact to a degree, but some we’ll still struggle with despite putting in immense effort. But that’s life. I feel very fortunate that I had a wonderful relationship with my mum, and very unfortunate that she died when I was 30, before I had children.

People are very fortunate to be in a loving relationship, but there are also so many people who are in struggling, or awful, or even abusive relationships. Some with partners who only add stress and extra difficulties to their life but they may be financially or emotionally unable to leave. They may look at your situation and find you to be the fortunate one.

Basically, we’re all dealt different cards and have to work with what we can the best we can, and so the only thing we can impact is our perspective on the whole situation. Whilst it’s difficult to not feel jealous of someone with a supportive husband and children, or someone who inherited millions from old aunt Maude, it’s not going to help your own situation.

I wish you all the best with your IVF journey.

Afraid I agree with this too.

I understand where you are coming from but when I was married people envied me those things without realising how horribly lonely I was with a man who did that type of thing but who had total contempt for me -those conveniences don’t necessarily mean it is a healthy relationship. Now I am single I have to do all those things and it is a pain but I am so much happier.
Agree with others -this is your envy, not their ‘privilege’ Other people will envy you for having a car, and one that is worth servicing.
And s job you enjoy.
Stop listening to smug podcast and listen to more entertaining and informative ones. One if the best is ‘Diary of a CEO’ which has hugely interesting and varied topics and gives a much healthier perspective on life challenges.

I want to echo the other poster advising you to build a network before having more IVF, I had my first child alone and it was incredibly lonely. I’ve built a circle and whilst I’m still incredibly lonely I do have people to call when things go wrong. Wishing you well in the next steps.

You sound very much like someone I used to know. Some really shitty things had happened in her life but she was completely unable to appreciate the good bits. If you said to her along the lines of, "but look where you are now with all of the good things in your life" (not exactly this but any conversation where this was the theme) she would come back with an angry rant about how unfair everything was and she deserved better and no one understands. She had a totally inability to appreciate anything good at all and seemed to be constantly jealous and bitter. Even if she got the fairytale life she thought she was entitled to, she wouldn't be happy.

Nobody has the right to have a child. It’s neither an entitlement nor a privilege. The cold harsh reality is that it’s just yet another biological process that women go through.

I do understand your point OP and I do have a supportive partner but your argument could also count for people who have close and supportive siblings. Also friends. I don’t think these people will ever realise how blessed they are.
I know GP’s do as they call them protective factors.

She is probably doing egg retrieval to freeze eggs so she can still have a baby when she finds a partner in the future. They can legally be frozen and used for up to 15 years.

And it's a smart thing to do if you don't think you'll have a baby by 34. The chances of it working out are over 90%, which is much higher than naturally over that age.

Really harsh responses - which only serve to show that most of those replying just don’t get it!! I completely understand where you’re coming from - it’s infinitely harder to do everything by yourself but you’re no less entitled to a good life than those in relationships.

You’re not being unreasonable in recognising other people’s privilege and feeling some sadness about the things you want but don’t have yet but you are being unreasonable in channeling lots of time and energy in to comparing your life to others and focusing on the negatives. It’s important for the sake of your well-being you focus on what you have got and the positives, and I’d recommend starting a gratitude practice. As a starting point try writing 3 things every morning you’re grateful for, using the format of “I am so grateful for ….. because …..” and every night before bed go through all the good things that have happened that day and pick your favourite. You will have privileges others don’t have. I hope you feel better soon.

There are a lot of people kicking you while you're down and in pain, OP.

They are taking it as a personal attack on themselves, just ignore it.

If they thought for five minutes about something in their lives they desperately wanted, or a time in their lives that was the case, and it felt unachievable but everyone else seemed to have it, they would be posting very different things.

Also you're super hormonal right now, it's natural to feel all over the place from this kind of thing. It's very intense. Things will feel better with time, even though it doesn't seem like it now.

I really don't think that you are in the right place to bring a child into your life. You are not coping with your life, and you want to tip it upside down by having a child.

Having children is amazing, but hard.

The starting point should always be to try and bring children into the best possible start in life. Shit happens, things go wrong but at least that should be the aim.

But you aren't coping even before you are pregnant.

Children are not a lifestyle accessory or ultimate desire. They are independent human beings with needs, wishes and preferences. You need to be able to utterly support your child, no matter what they are like or what they do.

As ever the first response has nailed it. It’s not a great choice to deliberately have a child without two parents.

I hope you're OK op.

Gently though, I think you have things the wrong way around here:

have the privilege of soaring self confidence knowing they have been accepted and loved in their long term relationships

I think having strong self confidence enables one to have loving long term relationships. More than the other way around