Couples going through reproductive grief often experience extremely difficult emotions, including anxiety, depression, and trauma. It is imperative that couples learn to mindfully communicate their emotions, as well as validate the emotions of their partner.

Reproductive grief often experience heightened nonproductive conflict brought on by invasive medical procedures and trauma. These couples also experience heightened decisional conflict, such as deciding when to stop treatment, what to do with leftover embryos in infertility, and how to communicate their experience with others. Couples who can dialogue and connect through this conflict find that their relationship stays strong through their experience.

Much of the Four Pillars work means finding the existential nature of the grief of reproductive loss, infertility, and complicated pregnancy/delivery. Many couples report that the disrupted dreams of parenthood bring forth incredible amounts of anxiety and grief. Couples who are mindfully curious with one another on the “why” behind their emotional experience often find that they can discover disrupted dreams of parenthood with one another.

Sex is one of the most profound ways that we can connect with our partner, yet sex often becomes highly disrupted during reproductive grief. Sex may become mechanical or a “means to an end”, and thus lose its passion and spontaneity. Couples who dialogue about this disruption in sex can find ways to keep their sex life connecting and passionate.