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Now let us talk about male infertility – a man’s inability to fertilize a woman. In this case Wikipedia suggests one more reason than it does for women. They are: 1) ejaculation disorders, 2) sexual disorders, 3) changes in genital anatomy, 4) endocrine disorders, 5) seminoferous (sperm-producing) epithelium damage, 6) genetic, chromosome damages, 7) inflammation, 8) immunological factor.

Again, I abridged the text a lot, but this time i did it, because I have nothing to write about men – no man ever came to me with an infertility problem. Nevertheless, women are the reason of infertility only in 60 per cent of the cases, it leaves men 40 per cent out of 100. My version is this: firstly, many (Russian) men have no idea that a psychologist could help; secondly, that psychologists could help with infertility; thirdly, that I could help as a psychologist.

Actually, when I was writing this book, one man did find out that it was about infertility. He said that in his family both he and his wife were infertile and they had been trying to conceive for five years, and he would come to my forthcoming seminar. He didn’t, he sent his wife instead.

When speaking about the reasons for male infertility, I would like to share an observation: Wikipedia points out that infertility in women has psychological reasons, it does not point out such a reason for men. Does this mean they don’t have a psychological level? However, Wikipedia profoundly describes various sperm pathologies (if you’ll excuse me, I will skip this, as it is not relevant).

I have noticed that in a childless couple the biggest contribution a man does into dealing with infertility is making a sperm deposit for analysis (semen analysis). The rest is for the woman to deal with, even if she is utterly healthy and it’s her partner who is the reason they are childless. I cannot explain this paradox by biological reasons (woman’s ability for childbearing), but rather social and psychological reasons. Many of my healthy women-clients went through with harmful IVF procedure, because they were scared to discuss other options with their infertile husbands.

Ruediger Dahlke brilliantly voiced one of the reasons for this, by stating that a man’s inability to have children could be tied to the fact that on subconscious level he does not want to undertake any obligations and responsibility for a child8. I agree with this statement, still, I think there are other reasons, but I haven’t got a chance to exercise my knowledge – as I have mentioned, no man ever addressed me as a psychotherapist with an infertility problem. But women do address me on the subject of MALE infertility.

I will unfold the underlying reasons using examples from my practice below. One of them is lack of a better choice. It is well-known that a person always chooses the best of currently available options. I would like to show other options and may be people would like to change their behaviors and their lives.