it's a tough job, but it comes with benefits
Here's the thing about taharat hamishpacha and infertility.
OK, one of the many things.
If you came to this practice by one of the standard routes - if you took a kallah class, or studied the sources "inside" - you probably came across the Gemara that asks why we do this, and answers, "to keep a wife as beloved unto her husband as the day they were married." Absence makes the heart grow fonder, observant Jewish couples have active sex lives much longer than the average couple, T"H keeps the excitement alive, blah blah blah blah blah. Right?
When I heard this as a new bride, it didn't mean much to me. I don't need anything to keep the excitement alive right now, thankyouverymuch, I thought to myself; what I could use is more time to explore this new intimacy with my husband, more time to grow secure in it rather than having the ground pulled out from under me every two weeks. I was willing to concede there might be benefits by the time I was in my forties or fifties, but I didn't see them kicking in anytime soon.
But my older sister assured me, "You'll see. You're going to be very glad of this when you have a couple of kids. Raising them takes so much of your time and energy; if you didn't know there were certain times set aside just for you to be with each other, it might never happen. "
Enter half a decade without children (THUD).
So no, I don't have the hubbub of family life distracting me from being with my husband. Instead, we already struggle with added pressure on sex at that time of the month, as our only chance to conceive looms and once again passes us by. T"H certainly doesn't help us enjoy that time more; if anything, it adds more stress and unwanted focus on the whole thing. And we couldn't be further from complacency about physical touch. We need it so badly, both as communication and comfort, as we endure the toll that repeated stress and disappointment takes on a relationship.
To make it as an infertile couple is to cling to each other as hard as you can, to do everything in your power to keep your relationship strong. I don't see T'H as something that makes a marriage stronger, I don't think I ever did. I saw it as a challenge: to keep your marriage strong despite not being able to touch. But infertile couples already have more challenges in that regard than anyone needs. I can't see what good T'H is doing us. It's more than a little isolating to find yourself shut out of a statement that is used so widely to teach couples about the good life that comes with T"H.
I was never doing it for the benefits, though; from the very beginning I took this on as an act of faith, something that tied me to generations of women in the past, present and future. For that same reason, I don't contemplate giving it up now. But I've gone beyond finding it unnecessary, to wondering sometimes if it's unfair to ask this of a couple going through infertility. Isn't it enough that people like us cry with every negative pregnancy test, with every miscarriage? Do we have to also cry because we can't hold each other as we fall asleep?
Comments
Oh, I agree! I certainly don't mean to imply that infertility is the only thing that makes T"H harder (or vice versa). It's not the worst thing a couple can go through, by any means.
I just think they make each other harder in a particularly ironic way...
Hashem must know what He's doing.
Oh, you almost made me cry with this. I can so relate to this need for physical comfort while going through infertility. And not just IF; I went through a severe depressed state a while back, and just to be held by my husband while I cried would have been so comforting.
I think if you have any kind of extreme emotional challenge, be it infertility, depression, an illness or disease, etc., t'h can add so much more stress onto that challenge.