Emailing an old friend today, someone I haven’t talked to for about a year, I was giving the broad strokes on my life and mentioned that we are TTC, still TTC, still not pregnant. I am, as I have said before, very Out. I have no issue with it – I expect ignorant comments (though not rude ones) and know how to respond to them.

So it was no surprize when he responded with the usual well-wishes on our journey, the “don’t worry about it,” and the comment that isn’t it true that the more one “tries” the harder it is to get pregnant, anyways.

Like I said I am not distressed by this. But I am very perplexed. This is a very, very far-reaching myth. Why do people believe that? People who have never been pregnant, never really dealt with pregnancy and know next to nothing about the process – yet they believe very firmly that “thinking about it” and “trying” will indeed prevent pregnancy. These are otherwise very intelligent people who work in all forms of careers, who have brilliant college degrees and are very street-wise. And yet they somehow believe that one’s thoughts can and will affect a physical event. I just don’t understand. Where does this myth come from??

I would expect that it comes from a similar place as the misbeliefs about depression – that one can change it by not thinking about it, that you can just “get over it.” But I understand where that comes from – depression is such an intangible thing and if you don’t deal with it or know someone close who has people tend to not really be able to understand it.

But conception and pregnancy, that is something that people in general have – at least to my mind – at least a rudimentary understanding. You learn early how the sperm swims up to meet and inseminate the egg. If people know nothing else about the cycle and process (and I’m willing to bet most don’t) it comes down the the sperm and the egg. But it is completely physical. I fail to understand where the thoughts thing comes into it. Will my over-thinking scare away the sperm? Will my anxiety adversely affect the egg so that it sulks in a corner?

But as usual I respond with a short comment about how medical problems are quite common and it must be addressed (saying nothing about how asinine the idea that my thoughts are preventing a pregnancy) and left it at that. I try to not go off on people who mean well. (If they don’t mean well, however, I feel quite fine in being snotty and detailing the ovulation cycle, conception and all the medical problems that can and do interfere with it.)

And all of this is why I believe we (as a society) need to be more open about infertility. The fact that it is a topic not typically discussed or even mentioned contributes to the lack of education. People honestly have no clue. How does that change? By knowing people who are struggling, by learning about all the different medical conditions, by understanding what actually goes on in the process. Maybe they’ll never need to know for their own situation, but bets are good that they’ll come into contact with someone else.

I tend to take up causes – just as my poor husband, who has had to listen to many tirades in our time together. My long-standing cause is animal welfare, and again it all comes down to education (well for most people – for some people they are just assholes and no amount of education will change that). And it really is a hard line to tread, because in educating people you run the risk of pissing them off if they do not wish to be educated, if they feel attacked. (I am coming to the belief that many people prefer to have their fingers in their ears and just don’t want to know – it’s easier to go on about your life if you don’t know. And when it comes to infertility, that requires at least some mention of topics that aren’t considered polite, so it’s back to the fingers-in-the-ears thing.)

I’m probably going to join RESOLVE, because I want to support what they’re doing. And I’m going to keep talking about it, even though afterwards I have to sit there, blinking, and wonder how the frick intelligent people can still manage to say idiotic things.