Fertility and relationship readiness: when one of you isn't ready

Fertility, different timelines, and the conversations couples can become trapped inside

There is a particular kind of conversation that can happen repeatedly in a relationship without ever really moving.

When do you think you'll be ready?

I don't know.

But we've talked about this before.

I know.

So what are we waiting for?

Perhaps the subject is trying for a baby. Perhaps it is egg freezing, embryo freezing, fertility testing, IVF, or simply deciding whether children belong in the future at all.

One person experiences time as increasingly urgent. The other experiences the conversation itself as pressure.

Soon, the couple is no longer only thinking about fertility. They are arguing about what the other's position means.

If you really wanted this with me, you would know.

If you loved me, you wouldn't pressure me.

You keep avoiding the future.

Nothing I say is ever enough.

This is where a conversation about readiness can become stuck.

The words remain the same, but underneath them sit questions about commitment, freedom, dependency, ageing, loss and whether two people are still imagining the same life.

FERTILITY AND RELATIONSHIP READINESS: WHAT DOES “READY” MEAN?

Readiness sounds as though it should be a clear internal state.

One day you are uncertain. Then something settles and you know.

For some people, it does happen like that. For many, it doesn't.

A person can want a child and be frightened of becoming a parent. They can imagine parenthood with their partner while worrying about money, work, their body, their relationship or the loss of the life they currently have.

They may also carry experiences from their own childhood into the question.

What did becoming a parent do to my mother or father?

What happened to their relationship?

Was family life loving, chaotic, engulfing, absent?

What kind of parent might I become?

These aren't always thoughts we consciously connect to “I'm not ready yet.” They can nevertheless shape what readiness feels like.

Fertility decisions touch developmental hopes and identity very deeply. Psychoanalytic writing on infertility has described how reproductive difficulty can affect self-esteem, identity and imagined developmental trajectories — the life we thought we were going to have.

So “I'm not ready” may contain several truths at once.

The problem begins when the other person has to guess which one it is.

WHEN URGENCY MEETS AVOIDANCE

A familiar pattern can develop.

The more anxious one partner becomes about time, the more they raise the subject.

The more frequently the subject is raised, the more pressured the other feels.

They withdraw, become vague or ask for more time.

The withdrawal increases the first partner's anxiety.

So they ask again.

Neither person is deliberately creating the cycle. Each is responding to the other.

And each response produces more of the thing they fear.

The person seeking reassurance encounters more distance.

The person seeking space encounters more pressure.

Couple therapists will recognise something much broader here than fertility. Similar pursue-withdraw patterns occur around sex, commitment, money and emotional closeness. Fertility simply raises the stakes because there may also be a biological timeline running alongside the relational one.

Research with couples experiencing infertility supports the importance of looking at distress dyadically rather than treating each partner as psychologically separate. Studies have found that the way one person copes and communicates can be associated with their partner's adjustment as well as their own. Positive shared coping has also been associated with better relationship adjustment during assisted reproduction.

What happens between two people matters.

SOMETIMES THE ARGUMENT IS ASKING ANOTHER QUESTION

Imagine one partner says:

“I need us to decide whether we're going to try for a baby.”

The conscious question is clear.

But another question may be travelling alongside it:

Are you choosing a future with me?

The partner responds:

“I just need more time.”

Again, there may be another question underneath:

Can I remain myself inside the future you're asking me to enter?

Neither translation will always be correct. That is precisely why curiosity matters.

We can become so frightened by what our partner's position might mean that we stop asking what it actually means to them.

The conversation becomes organised around interpretation.

You don't want children.

You're obsessed with having a baby.

You'll keep delaying forever.

You only care about your timeline.

Once partners begin speaking from these fixed versions of each other, there is very little room left for surprise.

And relationships need some capacity to be surprised by the other person.

FERTILITY CAN TURN TIME INTO POWER

There is also a genuine asymmetry that shouldn't be psychologised away.

Reproductive time does matter.

Female fertility declines with age, and age is particularly important when considering egg

quality, natural conception and fertility preservation. Someone in their mid-thirties thinking about motherhood may therefore experience “let's wait a few more years” very differently from a partner who does not experience the same biological pressure.

That can create an uncomfortable dynamic.

The person who feels time most acutely may begin carrying responsibility for the couple's reproductive future:

If I don't bring this up, nothing will happen.

The other can begin to feel that every conversation arrives with a deadline.

Neither position is imaginary.

There really may be time pressure.

There really may also be relational pressure.

A useful conversation has to be able to hold both.

EGG FREEZING DOESN'T COMPLETELY REMOVE THE QUESTION

Fertility preservation can create valuable options when a couple's relational timeline and reproductive timeline do not neatly coincide.

It can also become part of the couple dynamic.

One person may experience freezing eggs as relief:

I can give us some time.

Another may experience the same decision as unsettling:

What does this say about our future?

And the person freezing their eggs may carry both experiences themselves.

I am protecting my options.

I wish I didn't have to.

I hope these eggs are for the family we eventually have.

I also need to know I have choices if that doesn't happen.

That complexity deserves room.

Fertility preservation can alter the conditions under which a decision is made. It cannot tell a couple what they want from one another.

DIFFERENCE ISN'T THE FAILURE OF A COUPLE

There can be a fantasy that the right relationship produces perfect agreement.

Two people fall in love, build a life and eventually arrive at parenthood with matching levels of certainty.

Real couples are made of two separate minds.

Readiness may develop at different speeds. One person may be more frightened. One may feel more urgency. One may need information while another first needs to understand what they feel.

The aim cannot always be immediate agreement.

Sometimes the more important achievement is being able to hear something difficult about your partner without immediately requiring them to stop feeling it.

I'm scared of becoming a parent.

I am frightened we will wait too long.

Part of me wants this and another part doesn't.

I don't know yet.

These can be painful things to hear.

They are also much more useful than the defensive positions couples often retreat into.

Research on couples undergoing fertility treatment similarly suggests that mutual engagement and positive dyadic coping are associated with better emotional and relational outcomes, while negative or markedly asymmetric coping patterns can be associated with greater distress.

A relationship doesn't require identical responses.

It needs somewhere for different responses to be known.

A DIFFERENT CONVERSATION

If you keep having the same fertility conversation, it may be worth temporarily putting the decision aside.

Ask each other something more difficult.

What frightens you about doing this?

What frightens you about not doing it?

The second question is particularly important.

Someone reluctant to begin trying may fear losing freedom, financial stability or the relationship as it currently exists.

Someone desperate to begin may fear losing the possibility of parenthood altogether.

Suddenly, the conversation is no longer:

Who is right about when we should start?

There are two people describing what feels at risk.

That doesn't guarantee agreement. Some differences are fundamental. If one person ultimately wants children and the other does not, understanding each other beautifully will not make that incompatibility disappear.

Understanding still matters.

It allows the couple to discover what the disagreement actually is.

READINESS MAY NEVER FEEL COMPLETE

Perhaps one of the harder truths about parenthood is that complete readiness may be an impossible standard.

A decision this large inevitably contains uncertainty.

There may always be another financial milestone, another career move, another house, another reason why next year would feel safer.

There may also be very good reasons to wait.

The question is whether “not yet” remains an active thought or has become a way of avoiding one.

Likewise, urgency deserves examination. Wanting an answer immediately can sometimes be driven by real reproductive circumstances. At other times, certainty about the future becomes a way of trying to quiet uncertainty about the relationship.

Both partners have something to think about.

A QUESTION TO CARRY WITH YOU

When you find yourselves returning to the same argument about fertility, try asking:

What have we each come to believe the other's position says about us?

Perhaps “not yet” has come to mean “not with me.”

Perhaps “I need to decide” has come to mean “you are taking away my freedom.”

Those meanings may be true.

They may also be projections created in the frightening space where certainty is missing.

The only way to discover the difference is to make enough room for two separate minds to speak.

The goal is not to force yourselves onto the same timeline.

It is to understand what each timeline contains — and then decide what the two of you can genuinely create from there.

SOURCES AND FURTHER READING

Chaves, C., Canavarro, M.C. & Moura-Ramos, M. “The Role of Dyadic Coping on the Marital and Emotional Adjustment of Couples With Infertility.” Family Process, 2019. The study of 67 couples highlights the importance of partners' coping responses in relational and emotional adjustment to infertility.

Molgora, S. et al. “Examining the Role of Dyadic Coping on the Marital Adjustment of Couples Undergoing Assisted Reproductive Technology.” Frontiers in Psychology, 2019. In 167 couples beginning ART, positive forms of shared coping were associated with better marital adjustment.

Chen, J. et al. “Dyadic coping profiles and emotional distress in Chinese infertile couples.” Scientific Reports, 2026. Recent couple-level research identified distinct patterns of mutual engagement and disengagement associated with different levels of emotional distress.

Leon, I.G. “Understanding and treating infertility: psychoanalytic considerations.” Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry, 2010. A psychodynamic account of infertility's relationship with identity, self-esteem, developmental aspirations and interpersonal experience.

Evidence checked: August 2026.

Venus of Now provides general education and reflection. This article is not personalised psychological, relationship or medical advice and does not replace consultation with an appropriately qualified professional.