A man has opened up about the pain he has been facing after finding out he can’t father children.
42-year-old Craig Franklin was confronted with unexpected news when he was told he was infertile while trying for a baby with his wife Katie, 41.
According to the IT worker, he was told he had no sperm when he and his wife started trying to get pregnant back in 2010 after kicking off their life as a married couple.
“He said ‘you have no sperm. You can’t have children,’” Craig said as he recalled the time both he and his wife were stunned by his semen analysis results.
Following the news of his infertility, the man was left devastated and started feeling horrible about not being able to father children and give his wife what she wanted.
At his lowest point, the 42-year-old began feeling powerless and even went on to encourage his wife to leave him and find a man who could give her children instead.
“He looked me in the eye and said, ‘I’m not good enough. I can’t give you what you want. Go and find someone who can,’” Katie recalled. “I couldn’t cope with how he was behaving. A few times, I wanted to run away.”
Meanwhile, her husband admitted that the news left him feeling emasculated and that he felt grief for having the option of becoming a father stripped away from him.
While he was typically laid-back and calm, Craig eventually developed a worrying attitude as his hopelessness turned into anger.
“He would shout at me. It got to the point where I knew he’d have to walk away from an argument. That’s the only way he’d calm down. We learned together to deal with it,” Katie said.
Craig added: “I became very closed. I didn’t want to talk to friends. I wasn’t the person Katie married. I considered counseling but couldn’t find any experts geared up to deal with my specific situation.”
Knowing he couldn’t father a child naturally, Craig urged his wife to leave him in a conversation that left both of them in tears.
“She said if she did, the vows she took on our wedding day would mean nothing,” Craig recalled before his wife said the conversation ended in tears on both sides.
After trying to move on with his life, Craig resorted to compulsive spending to cope with his situation. When Katie started asking questions about his purchases, he began hiding things from her until she one day discovered he had secretly spent over $25,000 in less than a year.
Following her discovery, Katie seized her husband’s bank cards and ordered him to pull himself together or face losing her.
“I said, ‘Stop doing what you’re doing, or I won’t be here anymore,’” she recalled telling her husband.
After the ultimatum, Craig managed to get his spending habits under control. Not feeling passionate about anything, however, caused him to lose his job.
Fortunately, the 42-year-old soon managed to find new work in the IT industry. He and his wife also agreed to look into alternative methods of becoming parents.
Two years ago, the pair gave IVF a try. After spending over $10,000, however, their embryo failed. Nevertheless, the couple refused to give up and started looking into the option of an embryo donation.
As Katie admitted, being unable to become a mother hurts. She doesn’t, however, blame her husband for anything. “I am still desperate to have children. It does hurt. But I don’t blame Craig at all,” she expressed.
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