Couples Relax! Going Through IVF Won't Strain Your Marriage

Couples contemplating the use of assisted reproductive technology can breathe easy. A new study has found, contrary to reports of 2005 and 2011, that going through IVF does not put strain on a marriage. It can actually bring them closer! Various reports had stated earlier how the experience of infertility treatments could leave couples devastated and they could start blaming each other with communication breaking down. Some fertility stories even said that infertility could completely 'take over couple's lives'.

But this has been found wrong, as stated in the results of the new study, conducted at the University of Porto, Portugal. For the research, 42,845 patients who were undergoing ART procedures were tracked for 16 years. It was a cohort study based on registry data of the women in Denmark between 1994 and 2009. "Our results will be reassuring for couples who have had or are contemplating IVF," said investigator Mariana Martins from the Faculty of Psychology at the university.

The data that proved this showed that at the end of the study the majority of couples had children with their baseline partners (56 percent non-ART vs 65 percent ART), and around one-fifth ended up separated or divorced (20 percent ART vs 22 percent non-ART). And this separation was not found to be due to the strain during the process but rather because some couples remained childless after the procedure.

The study also elaborates on how couples are able to communicate better during the long process and that IVF treatment gives the couple a chance to cope together using strategies like crying, listening to each other's concerns and talking about light at the end of the tunnel even if the procedure didn't yield positive results. Martin suggests that couples should be provided information about the success rates of different procedures and other options to make fertility treatment easier for them.

The study's results were presented at the Annual Meeting of European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) in Geneva.

(Inputs from ANI)

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