Before I introduce today's guest I just want to give you all a reminder to enter the giveaway. It's a fabulous one this week, and it ends tomorrow so be sure to enter ASAP!
Now for our guest today. Bruce is one of my dear friend's husband. He is one of my favorite people to be around - probably because he reminds me so much of my brothers. He's absolutely hysterical and his thoughts on the subject have had me doubled over laughing, but also in tears. He just gets it, and I'm so glad you get to know him as well. So I give to you Bruce...
**************************************************************
I don’t think I need to say that men and women think differently. That’s just understood. Instead I’ll begin with a simple example: If the kitchen faucet is broken, a man would say “I’ll fix it”. He doesn’t need to sit down and talk about how the broken kitchen faucet makes him feel (as a woman might). Does the broken faucet affect his daily life? Yes. Does he consider the broken faucet a very unfortunate circumstance? Most definitely. But his reaction is to fix it. That’s it. You might say that the man is insensitive and doesn’t care about the problems or distress caused by the broken faucet. Untrue. He just wants to immediately eliminate the problems and distress by… you guessed it… fixing it.
Now let me share a little history about my wife and me. We had been trying to get pregnant for quite some time with no luck. We decided to visit the doctor and after some tests, we were told that we would never be able to have children naturally. Wow. A huge blow. Life changing. Devastating. Unfair. The list goes on. Now, this news is a lot bigger and way more important than a broken kitchen faucet. But as unfortunate as it is, my man mind reacted in a very similar way.
Mostly because of what I do for a living, I like using numbers, data, charts, graphs, etc. With that being said, I have included a graph to illustrate how we reacted to the news from the doc.
Yes, that’s right. I needed zero time to mourn. I just wanted to say, “It’s okay. There are things we can do for this. We’ll fix it.” My wife, on the other hand, needed time to mourn. And time to cry. And time to wonder why I showed no emotion. And that’s okay. I would have been worried otherwise. Now let’s be clear… as you can see in the graph, I was equally as sad and disappointed as she was. But the fact of the matter is… I’m a man.
Let’s fast forward a few months. We decided we would try in vitro fertilization. We found a great doctor and got the ball rolling. To be brief, I summarized our in vitro experience with another graph.
I hope it’s clear to everyone who took the brunt of the unpleasantness.
Another fast forward. It worked! We are pregnant. Well, she is anyway. My last graph summarizes our life since the successful in vitro.
So there you have one example of a man’s view of infertility. I hope I didn’t portray men as insensitive or uncaring. We just like to fix things. Even really serious and difficult things. Infertility included.
