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For many couples, sex is not just physical but a private language of belonging. One of the most difficult parts of a fertility journey is the intrusion it creates in that intimacy. Sex and closeness slowly become timed events, and the pressure to perform can rob the couple of connection.
In short, scheduled sex mutes our most intimate love language by tracking it, monitoring it, and medicalizing it. What starts as “go have fun,” as doctors often state, gradually becomes reduced to just another task, especially as the months go on. This part of the journey toward parenthood is rarely acknowledged openly.
When fertility treatment leads to IVF with donor eggs, sex may have dropped off significantly. By this point, intimacy has often been under strain for some time. While this path can hold real hope of completing one’s family, with many hurdles and no guarantees, it also adds another layer of pressure and emotional labor—helping explain why sex may have receded, not because desire is gone, but because sex has been tied to stress for too long.
Why Donor Profiles Can Feel So Disturbing
Some women report intrusive images that feel almost unbearable: the sense that another woman and her partner are doing, with ease, what you have been struggling to achieve for years.
Donor profiles can feel sexual even when nothing sexual is actually happening. This is not about desire. Fertility stress and sexual distress are closely linked. When something this important is threatened, the mind works in images, not words. Images land faster than thoughts, which is why they show up so vividly under stress (Peterson et al., 2007; Gianaros et al., 2015). Words live in the thinking part of the brain; images live in the survival part.
Because of this, the body can react before the mind has time to make sense of what is happening.
This can feel like anger and jealousy without betrayal. There is no wrongdoing, yet the body reacts as if something intimate has been taken or replaced. That paradox is what makes the experience so confusing.
Let’s be clear: This response is normal.
It does not mean you are insecure. It does not mean you are jealous in a shallow way.
It does not mean you are not ready for donor conception.
The Unspeakable Thought
All of this often crystallizes into a thought that feels very hard to say out loud, but goes something like this:
“I am really glad to be having a baby, but is my husband having a baby with someone else? I cannot get that image out of my head. My husband is having sex with someone else. I’m angry at him and jealous, but nothing has even happened.”
These thoughts arrive like uninvited guests. They are not chosen; they intrude, like so much else on this journey. Love, anger, and jealousy can coexist, but it is often the latter that gets misinterpreted, lingering as some form of moral failing.
These thoughts are not about logic. They reflect the impact of having one’s private world repeatedly intruded upon and reorganized by the fertility process.
What Is Actually Being Triggered
This reaction is rarely about sex itself. Psychologically, several things are happening at once.
First, grief is being activated. Donor profiles confront you with the reality that your body could not do what another body can. That is not a small thing. It is an identity rupture. If feelings of self-worth were already vulnerable, the grief of never being enough can be reactivated, echoing earlier wounds rather than arising in isolation.
Second, intrusive images are not fantasies or wishes. They are threat responses—the mind’s attempt to organize something that feels unsettling and uncomfortable. When having a baby does not come easily, it requires an extraordinary level of vigilance: constant attention to timing, bodily signals, test results, medical decisions, and what might go wrong next.
Living in this sustained state of monitoring trains the mind to stay alert. Intrusive images can arise as an intense by-product of that vigilance. Even if their timing or form feels unnatural or unexpected, they reflect a nervous system shaped by prolonged uncertainty, not desire or intention.
Third, there can be an unconscious comparison wound. In our most vulnerable moments, comparison has a way of undoing us. Many women experience a sudden sense of being replaced, outpaced, left behind, or even being too old. In these moments, fears can come alive and feel real and convincing, but they are reflections of pain and threat, not truths about worth or your place in a relationship.
We all carry a deeply ingrained story about how babies are made and how families come to be. Donor conception disrupts that story in a way that can feel profoundly disorienting. Coming to terms with this new reality takes time—the psyche is being asked to let go of one story and slowly make room for another. What is being activated here is not failure or deficiency, but the natural human response to a life path that has taken an unexpected turn.
Shame Makes It Worse
Many women judge themselves harshly for having these thoughts. Part of them understands it logically, and part of them can’t help but react, sometimes even lashing out at their partners, which invites more shame. This shame-loop only intensifies the distress.
When something feels unnamed or difficult to make sense of, it often grows louder internally. Silence amplifies what might otherwise soften with understanding.
How to Work Your Reactions
- Separate meaning from imagery. Intrusive images are not truths; they are stress responses.
- Slow the pace of exposure. You do not need to binge on donor profiles.
- Reclaim the narrative; this is a deliberate choice, not something happening to you.
- Allow space for your complexity and humanness. You can carry both grief and agency, mourn what was lost, and still move forward.
Reset
Choosing a donor is not about replacing you, nor about erasing intimacy. It is about expanding the way your family comes into being.
Nothing about this reaction means something is wrong with you or your relationship. It means intimacy has been asked to carry more than it was generally designed to hold. Talk to your partner, and allow yourself to find out whether what you’re fearing is actually true.
