The problem of separating sexual feelings from emotions connected with babies in relation to the advantages, for some people, of the slight failure rate of the IUCD. Some women find, often at an unconscious level, that they can only allow themselves the loss of control and joy of sex only if it is somehow legitimized by the possibility of pregnancy. For others, the fact of motherhood is the central excitement in their lives and without it sex becomes meaningless. One woman described how the happiest moments of her life were when, ‘They put the baby in my arms and called me mother.’ When she was sterilized after her fifth baby she lost all interest in sex and could not allow her husband to touch her. Alas she was not helped by counselling.
It is not only women who have difficulty accepting that their fertility is separate from their sexual feelings. Some men also have fears that the end of fertility is the end of all sexual feeling and even though they may realize intellectually that this is not so, unconscious doubts can cause difficulties. It is a wise doctor who listens to the man who says, ‘I just feel I would not be the same.’ A degree of reassurance is reasonable if doubts about a vasectomy are clearly related to the operation, but if the doubts are somehow more vague, or are connected to his feelings about himself as a man, they should be respected (Howard, 1982).
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