Living with emotional pain every day, and how to cope.

I promised myself when I started It’s That Sober Guy that I would be 100% honest with my readers. I believe this is important in the drive to stay sober but also with any other lifestyle changes you wish to make. I know writing this post, is going to be hard, and it may turn out more than one post but here goes…

I’ve said before that I used to drink to cope with life, but what I’ve not said is that this is primarily due to not being able to have children. My wife suffers from polycystic ovary syndrome. I knew this when I met her and when I decided to marry her. I’ve never regretted this decision but knowing that having a baby may be difficult we stopped using contraception shortly after getting married, however, I always believed that someday it would happen naturally.

I’ve just celebrated my 13th wedding anniversary and still no success, up until very recently, IVF has never been an option for us, my relationship with food is very similar to the problematic relationship I’ve with alcohol. For this reason, both my wife and I are above the body mass index (BMI) to have IVF in this county. We have got close on occasion, but the first time my wife had to have back surgery and the second we went into a Covid 19 lockdown.

When did I start to worry?

Some of my friends had children in their early twenties, there was no way this would have been me; I had my whole ahead of me, I was out partying, drinking, and having a good time. But as I started approaching my 30s, I was noticing fewer and fewer out at the weekends. I did not realise it at the time, but this was due to them having children.

In my early 30s, it started to hit me harder, I was seeing more and more photos on social media of friends’ children, first days at school or birthday parties. The need to have children grew and grew, it started as a dull pain in my stomach and just got worse from there.

How did I cope?

Well, if I’m honest, badly! My drinking increased and often I was doing it on my own, I would start off drinking with my wife, who would also want a drink come Friday but by the end of the night, I would be drinking on my own, scrolling through social media, getting more and more upset and feeling alone. Ironically all this was happening while my wife, who loved me very much, would wish I would just come to bed.

What society tells us.

I often get asked why I don’t have children, often followed by “you would make such a good dad,” to which I want to reply, I know, but life is so bloody cruel sometimes! But instead, I just say, it’s not happened for us yet.

I see so many messages that children complete you, but what this message says to me is I cannot be complete without children. I see posts about Mother/ father’s day and my heart breaks a little bit more each time.

It took a global pandemic to bring me closure, or so I thought.

As I previously mentioned we nearly hit the recommended BMI to explore IVF in the UK, and then we went into a national lockdown due to the Coronavirus pandemic. While the pandemic was horrendous, one of the things it did give me some perspective, people were dying, single people were having to isolate on their own, and I had my wife, my dog, and a small back garden to enjoy. I even managed to use the lockdown to stop drinking for good, I started with a 1 month’s break and by the time this was up the supermarkets had run out of alcohol, so I continued and 3 years later here I’m.

Hope just brings hurt.

My sobriety has brought me so many amazing things, however, children are not one of them. We found out that the medical guidelines for IVF in Greece are more relaxed than in the UK. However, it is not cheap and on top of the IVF costs, you have the flights and accommodation on top. Despite this, we knew we had to give it one last go.

Now I wish I could finish this post with a happy ending, but alas, just last week we had the news, that none of the embryos was viable for transfer. My heart breaks again!

What next?

Well as expected, I’m going to have to write this article in more than one part. I promised you some coping strategies, and you can’t go through what we have for the last 20 years without developing some. I’m also not 100% this is the end of the story, but where there that ends, not even I know yet!

Ben – It's That Sober Guy

Disclaimer – I’m not a trained addiction or mental health professional, information is based on my own life experiences and shared in good faith to help others.