Partnership conflicts and male infertility

Background and Objective. There is empirical evidence that sterility causes a considerable amount of distress and affects correspondingly the partners hip. Empirical results concerning male infertility show increased somatic c omplaints and reduced self-esteem of the men as well as a dominance of the accompanying partners. Which couple conflicts arise after the diagnosis of male infertility! Patients/Methods. 84 infertile men were examined with a partnership diagnos tic questionnaire. The questionnaire was evaluated with regard to quantity and quality of unsolved couple conflicts. Results. The results show that infertile men do not mention more unsolved c onflict areas in their partnership than healthy men. If one looks qualitati vely at the mentioned conflict areas, striking differences in comparison to the control group can be seen. Conclusions. In comparison to the control group of healthy men,the specific ity of conflict areas in infertile couples can be best understood on the ba sis of exchange-theoretical considerations.