Peter’s male infertility

Peter’s male-factor infertility begins as a private medical obstacle to the family he and Eva hope to create, but it grows into a force that reorganizes their marriage and becomes entangled with grief, donor conception, and reproductive choice. Tests show that Peter has too few sperm, and that they move poorly; the diagnosis leaves the couple facing treatment after he had hoped to conceive a child with Eva without medical intervention.

Background and diagnosis

After a year of trying, Peter and Eva consult their general practitioner, who sees no reason for alarm and recommends charting Eva’s basal temperature to help time intercourse. Each morning at half past six, Eva takes her temperature and records it. A rise of 0.2 degrees Celsius signals a likely approaching ovulation, and sex becomes scheduled around that window. Peter describes the change as a loss of spontaneity: foreplay is cut short, and intercourse is reduced to a task that must be completed before they leave for work.

Their attempts to conceive continue without success. At a later appointment, Eva’s anger and distress meet Peter’s reluctance to enter what he calls the medical process. He wants a child with her, but fears that conception through medical intervention would displace the loving act he had imagined. He also misses their earlier intimacy: for much of the month they no longer have sex at all, and during the fertile days it feels automatic. Eva, whose desire for a child has come to dominate her thoughts, argues that tests might uncover a problem that could be readily treated. Their disagreement is not simply about whether to seek a diagnosis; it exposes how differently each experiences the cost of trying.

The next morning they obtain a referral to a gynaecologist. Eva’s examination and ultrasound reveal no apparent abnormality, blockage, cyst, or inflammation, and her temperature chart indicates that she ovulates monthly. Peter provides a semen sample after five days without ejaculation, masturbating alone in a small, dark room and handing the sample to a nurse with embarrassment. Three weeks later he repeats the process, this time with an adult video. Both analyses reach the same conclusion: his sperm count is low, and the sperm present have very little forward movement. The couple are told that medical assistance is the remaining route by which they might have a child.

Treatment and its costs

The diagnosis gives a name to the obstacle but does not make treatment emotionally neutral. Peter’s resistance is connected both to his wish for a child conceived through love and to the physical and emotional burden Eva bears in pursuing treatment. During a relationship session with Hetty, he explains that Eva has undergone the procedures while he has mainly had to pay and hold her hand. By then, the couple have undergone nine IVF attempts, four ICSI treatments, and five rounds of donor insemination. Peter believes they have reached a limit, especially after the death of Lieve, their daughter conceived with donor sperm. He regards the donor as an unknown genetic father whom he hates, and says that burying Lieve also meant burying the dream they had pursued through treatment.

The fertility process also changes the couple’s sexual relationship well before the later crises. Temperature charts turn sex into a timetable, and the pressure to conceive strips away the intimacy Peter longs to recover. What begins as a shared project therefore produces unequal experiences: Eva undergoes the examinations and treatment, while Peter lives with the knowledge that his sperm is the medical problem and with a growing fear that their marriage has become organized around conception. His hesitation about treatment and Eva’s fear of giving up remain opposing responses to the same infertility.

Donor conception and fatherhood

Donor conception makes the distinction between biological and social fatherhood immediate. Peter becomes Lieve’s father through his relationship with Eva and his participation in her care, but he is not the child’s genetic father. The distinction intensifies his grief rather than resolving the infertility that prompted treatment: he identifies the donor as a hated stranger, while the loss of Lieve closes, for him, the hope attached to their attempts to have a child together.

The question of genetic fatherhood later reappears in the couple’s relationship with Steef and Rebecca. Eva and Rebecca discuss arranging a partner-swapping encounter around Eva’s ovulation, hoping that Steef’s sperm might result in a pregnancy; they propose leaving the outcome to chance and acknowledge that a condom could leak. The plan is not presented to Peter and Steef as an agreed attempt at conception. Its concealed reproductive purpose contrasts with the explicit discussion of boundaries and permission surrounding the sexual encounter itself, making the difference between participation in sex and informed agreement to conceive consequential.

After a condom incident, Steef brings Eva a box of emergency contraception and apologizes for what happened. He says that he does not want another child: Sem was conceived against his wishes, and although he is trying to be a good father, he considers himself too unstable and too attached to his freedom. Later, after learning what Eva and Rebecca planned, he accuses them of taking his sperm without his consent and insists that he has a right not to want the child. His reaction brings the story’s competing claims into direct collision: Peter’s pain at being unable to father a genetically related child, Eva’s longing to become a mother, and Steef’s insistence that genetic fatherhood cannot be imposed on him.

Limits, loss, and an alternative

Peter’s infertility shapes not only the treatments the couple undergo but also the limits he eventually tries to set. After the repeated procedures and Lieve’s death, he no longer believes that continuing treatment is bearable. In the aftermath of a relationship session, he sees adoption as a new shared goal: a way for him and Eva to raise a child to whom neither is biologically related. He calls it not a second choice but a different one, and imagines it as a more honest path for the three people involved.

That decision marks a change in how Peter understands the couple’s future. At first he hopes for conception without medical intervention; later he consents to an exhausting series of treatments, then reaches a boundary after repeated failure and bereavement. Adoption offers a route beyond the demand that fatherhood depend on his sperm. Yet the subsequent attempt to secure a pregnancy through Steef shows that the unresolved desire for a child continues to shape choices in ways that violate trust. Peter’s infertility is therefore not only a diagnosis: it is the condition around which the couple’s intimacy, treatment decisions, grief, and conflicting claims to parenthood repeatedly turn.