Do you think infertility shows you who your real friends are?

[Wheresmyweetabix]

That sounds a bit petulant perhaps, and I don't mean it to be. It's a genuine question.

Through the experience of infertility, it's surprised me who has 'come forward' if you like with support and who hasn't.

By support I think I'm pretty low maintenance and I just mean the odd text checking how you are. I understand that infertility for those who haven't experienced it is a heck of a hard subject for some and many people might retreat a bit, just because they don't know what to say / are worried about saying the wrong thing at wiring time etc perhaps. (I don't know - just trying to put myself in others' shoes.)

But if you knew your friend was going through it, just literally one text to say 'hope things going ok' or 'thinking of you' would be more than enough for me to know that people cared.

Some friends are brilliant at this, but others... They know you're going through this, but may send literally not one text to see how it's gone / whether you're ok. Does it mean they don't care? Does it mean we're not as good friends as I thought we were?

A genuine question as I'm just a bit surprised. Should I be facing up to the fact that perhaps some people just aren't that concerned about you?

On the more positive side, you get the opposite too - surprises by some people who say and do really thoughtful things and you didn't actually know they cared so much.

Does anyone know what I mean by this, and what are other people's experiences?

No I don't think that and I had four cycles of icsi. some if my friends who weren't massively supportive or who behaved in a thoughtless way are still great friends of mine now and we're brilliant when I actually had kids or at times of other crises.
Not everyone intuitively knows how to support.

Hmmm interesting thoughts there. I like the train of thought copper - and zzzz and 2014 all good points. This is making me feel a bit better, thank you!

I just think that friends who haven't been through it can't really understand. My best friend blurred out she was pregnant at a dinner party when she knew I'd been ttc for over a year. She didn't know I'd just suffered an mc and would have been due two weeks after her.

We still haven't spoken since then as I don't know how to talk to her!! I'm sure she's just blissfully unawares of how I am feeling... and busy with her life. Meanwhile I feel like complete shit.

Infertility made me a pretty shit friend. I couldn't handle seeing friends with children and I cut myself off from some of the people who would have been the best to support me. It's shit and I regret not being able to tell people just how bad it was and not being honest about the things that made it so hard for me. Now I'm over a year into accepting it just won't happen to me and I'm only just starting to reconnect with the people I missed.

I have a friend that went through ivf and it failed but at the time I had no idea how to bring it up and ask for updates without sounding nosey but also just talking about other stuff like the cinema makes me sound like I'm not interested in what is a massive thing for you and your DP to go through so what's the right message to send? What what might be thoughtful to you could be intrusive to someone else -who is also usually low maintenance and laid back. It's so tricky I wouldn't gauge friendship on this time.

I think for your friends who don't have or want children it will be hard for the to understand as well and for the friends that have children they might not have much to say apart from family life, I know when people ask me what I've been up to or how I've been I can be guilty of talking about my kids and forgetting about me because after their bedtime al I have is work and Netflix and then if it's someone struggling to conceive you're speaking to then you don't want to be banging on about your kids.

If I was you I would send them a message letting them know what's happened so they don't have to ask and if they are good friends in other areas then don't judge them for this

Its a minefield.

I have two very dear friends who went through IVF.

One had a failed attempt and then 2nd round was a success and she had her lovely DD. She was very open about it all, and clearly updates and checking in and lots of interest was wanted and appreciated.

Another friend had three failed attempts and two attempts that ended in MC (but happily had her DS at 41 on her 6th round!)...but she really, truly didn't want to fuckingtalk about it to friends in any detail and didn't want questions an enquiries at ALL. After the second failed attempt I think she was done with sharing.

Difficult!

Dairymilk I think that's good advice to maybe not judge the friendship on this period. 34A similar point about people wanting very different things.

Physics and Heidi

Hugs Kate and Heidi and anyone else who has been through or going through this shit xxx

I'm so sorry to hear that this cycle wasn't successful for you.

I think any tough experience can have an effect on relationships with friends, whether it is infertility, grief, illness or something else. I've certainly become closer to a friend who is in a similar boat to me, and I've equally found some friends have been a little distant. But I don't think it's a bad thing in some ways. They perhaps realise that they don't truly understand what I'm going through and so can't really get too involved at the moment.

You sound like you are pretty quiet about the situation in general, so perhaps your friends think you don't want a fuss? Or could be worried about asking too much as you might not want that, and that you will tell them what you want to when you're ready? I definitely wouldn't assume that they don't care.

It is ok to ask for support from your friends, so I would suggest trying that. When my Dad died many years ago I noticed that many friends went very quiet but when I eventually spoke to them they basically all admitted that they just didn't know what to say.

So with this situation I've made a conscious effort to tell a select bunch of friends about what's going on and to keep them updated. I've been really upfront and told them what I do and don't want them to do (e.g. Don't tell me I need to eat pineapples/kale/whatever and "just relax" cos I'm afraid I might punch you, but do tell me about your own stresses and worries cos I'm still your friend and I do care). I think that has helped stave off any awkwardness.

I hope that you manage to reconnect with your friends and get some support from them and from the others who have surprised you too.

Infertility made me a pretty terrible friend. It was so painful. My best friend got pregnant with her second after I'd been trying 18 months and I ended up sending her an email to explain why I wasn't asking her anything about this huge life event. I realised I didn't want to end up with no friends after the kid question was answered one way or another. I was really vague to everyone about ivf dates etc as I didn't want people checking and working out whether it had worked etc etc. I didn't want to talk about it to anyone except my oh and those who'd been through or were going through infertility themselves.

So I don't think I made it easy to be friends with and I certainly wasn't at all supportive of friends pregnancies. I'd try with the odd question or "hope all's going well" text but that pales in comparison to questions from people genuinely interested about symptoms and yoga and scans etc!

My advice ultimately is as others have said, try not to judge how much they care based on how they handle this very difficult time. Also, let them know what support you'd like - don't feel like you shouldn't have to ask for it.

I'm so sorry you're going through this, it's truly shit

I struggled with this for a long long time. It really did make me reevaluate friendships and made me see how strong some are. It takes nothing to ask if someone is ok.
A lot of the time people said "I don't want to ask you" and o lost track of how many times I said " I want you to ask, if I don't want to talk I will say" . I Think not wanting to ask if Code for not being to handle the response.
And after 3 1/2 years what I now accept is that that's ok. I now know that those friends are on a level where no deep and meaningfuls will happen, I no longer share certain things with them and naturally see them slightly less but I do still care and ask them how they are etc.

No easy answer but I totally get how you are feeling and I'm sorry x

It's a hard one op as everyone will feel differently. My first round I would have been upset if friends didn't ask about it. After that one failed I wanted my 2nd round to be much more private and have found it invasive with people asking after every step.

The one thing I will say is friendships do change when you are going through something that they just cannot understand. I have had to distance myself from friends who have had babies recently bc it is too painful. To be honest though...they haven't exactly been reaching out. I just don't fit into their new mummy lifestyles anymore. This used to upset me but I've now realised that I need to be around the people I feel the most connected to right now and need to let the others go.