Although men contribute to infertility about 50 percent of the time, whether or not a couple can conceive is still overwhelmingly seen as a woman’s responsibility. This misconception puts an unfair burden on women, of course. But it also harms men. According to a new Cosmopolitan survey, men who want kids but don’t yet have them are less likely than their female counterparts to plan to proactively speak to a doctor about their fertility, less likely to say they feel “exhausted” by the responsibility to conceive a child, and less likely to feel very burdened by the pressure.
Because of this disparity, when men do struggle with infertility, it looks at once hauntingly familiar and unrecognizable. Here, they open up about shame and disappointment in a world that prioritizes virility.
When we were both 33, my wife and I started trying to get pregnant. I knew that men had biological clocks, so I made sure I was in good shape. I cut out weed. I pretty much stopped drinking. I was exercising more.
Four or five months in, in early 2024, we went to get tested—just in case. And I basically got the worst possible result: My semen analysis showed I had zero sperm, what’s called azoospermia.
I was in shock. You go through the stages of grief, beginning with denial. We went in to see a urologist, then a specialist so I could start on hormone therapies. It’s upsetting to go for test after test and see nothing improving and feel like I’ve let my wife down. I’m fortunate in that I don’t think she’s ever been the type to feel like it’s her life’s purpose to have a child. So she’s not dreaming of going to find someone better or blaming me. But it doesn’t make it easier because I blame myself. Most of the difficulty in our relationship has stemmed from that.
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I told my mom and sister pretty early on. It took me a long time to tell my dad. For some reason, it felt more shameful. It comes with this whole package of feeling like you’re not enough of a man. Part of it is that your dad is in some sense your model for a man, and you have some sort of subconscious need for approval.
I have done a lot of work to process this emotionally. But there are a lot of times when I feel like I’m still dealing with those stages of grief. I will get pissed off at myself for not doing enough, not knowing enough, and at the system for not catching this earlier.
I’ve accepted that the future won’t look like I’d hoped it would, and for the most part, I’m okay with that. But I’m not quite at one hundred percent yet.
It does kind of feel like my life is divided into the before and after. I just never really suspected….I think most guys don’t even realize that this is a possibility. At some level, I always wanted a family, but in hindsight, I wish that desire had crystallized earlier.
I never had that much pressure from my family. Now, I wish I had.
—MARK*, 35
*Name has been changed.
Ihave known since I was 15 that I wouldn’t be able to have children. As other kids started to grow and develop, I thought there was something wrong with me. My testicles were undescended and my puberty was delayed. I got an MRI to see if I had bits or not—I didn’t. I remember stomping up the stairs, yelling, “I’ll never be a dad! No one will ever call me Dad,” and slamming my door.
I never talked about it with my parents. There was no support; it was massively isolating. Not that I blame my parents, but at that time, there was no support for me.
I met my now-wife when I was 21. We became attached quickly. She was the best friend I’d been missing. If there was something heavy we wanted to say, we’d write notes to each other. I wrote her a note telling her I couldn’t have children biologically. I said, “I just need you to know this.” She was great about it. We just carried on and didn’t talk about it much until we got married four years later.
We had a sperm donor and now have twins who are 13 years old. During the fertility process, I was made to feel like an outsider (although not by my wife). The vibe was very much “let’s make her pregnant.” I had to give a sample and I remember getting a letter that said, “As expected, there’s no sperm and we will therefore pursue a treatment with your wife.”
We spoke to a sperm nurse, and every donor available at the time was a 6-foot-tall donor. I’m definitely not 6 feet tall and I was uncomfortable about that, but there wasn’t a lot of choice.
I had a lot of emotional baggage when the children were born, wondering what people would think. We had antenatal classes and I was this wreck of anxiety, like, Are people going to know because the babies don’t look like me? What are they going to say?
I needed people to know, but I couldn’t say it. In social situations, I’m often waiting for people to say something about them not looking like me. But it’s happened fewer than 5 times in 13 years. We told the kids about the donor when they were 7 or 8. And we checked back in to make sure they really understood it. They’re pretty chill. They never throw it in my face.
It’s a challenge, but parenting is challenging. I don’t have anything to compare it to, and neither do they. It’s just life and this is our crack at it.
—PAUL, 46
My wife and I met, got married, got a little flat and then a bigger place, and then we started talking about having a baby. We tried naturally, and it didn’t work. We went to the doctor and my wife had slight polycystic ovaries. But it was mainly me with the problems.
My sperm quality wasn’t good. They were slow swimmers and sometimes I wasn’t producing any live semen at all. It was emasculating and heartbreaking. They said if we did IVF, there was a slim chance...but a chance.
The first time I heard IVF didn’t work, I went a bit psychotic. I just left the house and went storming around. I don’t know where I went. I couldn’t get my head thinking straight. You hear about so many people having kids naturally. It’s like, Why is this happening to me? To us? What have I done wrong?
My mom is lovely; she was very supportive of me when it wasn’t working. But in her mind, my wife was the one with the problem.
There was anger and jealousy with our friends with kids. I couldn’t relate to the ones who had kids or the ones who didn’t want them. When everyone is getting pregnant at work or in your family, you’re happy for these people, but you don’t want to hear about it when you’re having failed attempts.
We said we may never become parents. Then on our last chance at IVF, we got pregnant. We had Evelyn after eight years of trying. It’s a long time. I would have gotten less time in prison for theft or arson.
—MARTIN, 40
