Your partner is 50% of the equation - if you want to have a healthy child, we can’t leave him out.  In this episode, I give you practical tips on how to include your partner in your fertility journey from day one and why it’s important to help you heal and prepare for the journey ahead. Tune in to learn more.

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Key Takeways

5:06 Using data to engage male partners

10:11 Importance of trust in pregnancy preparation

15:17 Building emotional regulation skills together

20:23 Balancing feminine and masculine energies

Memorable Quotes

"Fertility is a two way street. The amount of sperm analyses I've seen that are optimal is so little. I think I've seen maybe one or two out of hundreds that are actually good."

"Everything the male does will impact his sperm quality. You cannot make good sperm if there's a lot of health issues, period."

"Pregnancy for women is a very vulnerable state, which means we have to be able to lean on our men and feel protected, that we're going to be taken care of. If you don't feel like you can do that now, if you're looking at your man and thinking 'I don't trust him, I don't think he can take care of me,' you're in a vulnerable state already."

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What does it mean when he doesn't help you? How does that make you feel? And so if you take it down away from the anger and the frustration to I feel unheard, I feel unseen, I don't feel important. That's a different conversation than why aren't you doing this? I'm always doing this for you. I'm tired of it. I'm frustrated. And so those are the superficial emotions, if you will, and superficial doesn't mean that they're not good. It's like they're still very valid. But the real reason, I think, especially for this couple, that she was feeling so frustrated is like she doesn't feel like he appreciates her. Pregnancy is a natural process. So if it's not happening or if it's not sticking, something is missing. After having a family member go through infertility and experiencing a miscarriage myself, I realized how little support and education women have around infertility. I want to change, Change that. I'm Dr. Jane Levesque. I'm a naturopathic doctor and a natural fertility expert. Tune in every Tuesday at 9am for insightful case studies, expert interviews, and practical tips on how you can optimize fertility naturally. If you've been struggling with infertility, pregnancy loss, women's health issues, or you just want to be proactive and prepare yourself for the next big chapter in your life, this show is for you. All right, ladies, today I want to talk to you about getting your partner on board. And this is just a case that I'm taking on. And I see this quite a bit where the wife is just dragging the partner along. And so as a practitioner, I only work with couples. And this is a rule that I set a couple of years ago because I basically realized that if I want to help create generational health, I cannot do it with only one person involved because the male is 50% of the equation. And so then it came down to educating women to help them understand why it's not just a them problem. Like, ladies, it's not just a you problem. Fertility is a two way street. And the amount of sperm analysis that I have seen that are optimal is so, so little. Like, I think I've seen maybe one or two out of hundreds that are like, yep, this is actually a good sperm analysis. The rest of them either is progression, viability, sperm concentration, morphology, DNA fragmentation, or some results that are basically unreadable because the doctors are just typing something out and then sending it on a piece of paper. I've had multiple, I'm like, You can't read this. Like, I don't know what reference range you're using. I don't even know if this is, like, what's happening over here. So I have not met very many men who are super healthy. And I think in general, there's not a lot of healthy people right now, because if you look around, you can see that people are depleted, people are tired, people are overweight, they're inflamed, they're anxious. And so I don't want to discount your efforts because I think the effort is there, but we're missing some things, right, as a population. And so I find that if I can get. The women are usually on board, but it's getting the men on board that actually will help the women heal. And like I said, if I want to help build generational health, I can't do that with one person. And so the way that I get the male partners on board, number one, if, you know, you guys want to work with me, the male partner has to be there. And when we do some of our screening calls, essentially, we want to get the feel of what's going on for the men as well and anchor into something that they're trying to work on. So, for example, if your male partner is tired, if he's gained some extra weight, if his libido is off, chances are he has lower testosterone levels. When a man hears that he has low testosterone levels, he goes, well, I don't want that, right? He, like, men, want good testosterone levels. And so I always anchor into something that they're working on. For my husband, I mean, he's been on my podcast, so he could kind of explain because, you know, he was in the health and fitness space, but not as deep end as what we're doing now. And the supplements and, you know, the red light therapy and the saunas and all this other stuff that he's been doing for a long time now, that if it's something that whether he wants more energy, whether he wants to lose weight, whether he wants to have more libido, he just wants to feel good and focused, we can anchor that to sperm quality. Everything that the male does will impact his sperm quality. Everything. So what he does or doesn't do, hydration, sleep, stress level, exercise or no exercise, digestion issues, whatever, it will reflect in sperm quality. You cannot make good sperm if there's a lot of health issues, period. So I anchor into that. And then the next thing that I do is I actually just run a lot of data, right? I run labs and Men are very logical, and so it's helping them understand what's actually going on and how they're feeling. Now, for this young man, he is, oh, my goodness. I think they're in their mid-20s, and so that's a huge concern for me. When a couple that's in mid twenties is struggling to conceive. Because mid twenties is your prime. So in your prime, you are struggling to conceive. I almost think it's more concerning than someone who is in their 40s. Right. Like, if you're 39, 40, 43, trying to conceive, I would expect you to have issues, whereas a 25, I do not. And for this particular gentleman, his point of view was like, well, I know what I'm doing isn't good. I just feel like I'll deal with it later, you know, and it's very fair to say. And my hope is that we actually stop looking at health like that. Because if you look at, for example, money, so he's going to law school, and because he wants to be able to provide for his family, he likes the career, he thinks it's stable. It's all these things for him. And so then my question is like, well, what if you just sat on the couch until you were 40 and then you were like, I'll start figuring out how to make money in my 40s.

And as soon as I said that, he was like, well, no, that would be so much harder. That would be so much harder to go to school and learn and get this degree and then work and all of this stuff in your 40s than in your 20s. And it's like, yeah, your health is the same way. So you could wait until your 40s until something, quote, unquote, bad happens, but you get to decide what's the bad thing. You can say that gaining 10 pounds is the worst, or you can say that gaining 50 pounds is the worst, or 100 pounds. And so you get to decide where that gauge is. If I gain five pounds, I know something like, whether it's after the holidays or whatever, I don't feel great. I make the changes right away. So then I can go back to being my neutral self, if you will. Whereas before that, I remember when I gained, like, I don't even remember gaining £25, to be honest. It felt like it happened overnight, but I know it didn't. I just wasn't aware. And so trying to lose that £25 took me a long freaking time. It was really painful. If I would have stopped myself after. And that was my freshman 15, which was really freshman 25, because we were eating donuts, we were not sleeping. We would be drinking three or four times a week, like, heavily drinking. And then you're eating crap during that time. Like, there was zero mystery as to why I gained weight. But I just, like, don't actually remember when it happened. I just remember looking in the mirror one day and being like, I look puffy. Like, my pants don't fit. So there's just a huge lack of awareness. Right. And so the goal is to A, anchoring to something that they're excited about, that they want, and then B, help them with the data. The data. The men are driven by data. If you see this is red and this is what's causing your symptoms, then you're going to, you know, go into the. And this is what we do. Then you'll go into the green, the counseling component. So if you feel like you're nagging your husband, this is the piece where ladies like, I need you to stop doing that, But I also need you to be able to learn how to express your concern. So for this couple, she has been so bitter and resentful against him, towards him, because he's not doing anything around the house because he's so busy with school, and then he doesn't eat well. So it's like, if she doesn't make dinner, then, like, she doesn't get to eat. He's okay with that. She's not okay with that. Right? He's like, I'll just have piece of toast every day for the rest of my life, and I'm fine. And she's like, well, I don't want to do that because she wants to get healthy. She wants to get pregnant. So there was so much resentment and frustration, and they've had this conversation before, but it was more of like, you're not doing this. You're not helping me. You're not. Instead of, what does it mean when he doesn't help you? How does that make you feel? And so if you take it down, away from the anger and the frustration to I feel unheard, I feel unseen, I don't feel important. That's a different conversation than, why aren't you doing this? I'm always doing this for you. I'm tired of it. I'm frustrated. And so those are the superficial emotions, if you will. And superficial doesn't mean that they're not good. It's like, they're still very valid. But the real reason, I think, especially for this couple, that she was Feeling so frustrated is like, she doesn't feel like he appreciates her. She doesn't feel like he cares for her, because it doesn't matter what happens. It's like, oh, I guess there's no dinner on the table versus, like, we're a family and we're a unit and we want to have kids. Like, who's going to figure out what's on the table? Me. What if I can't cook because I'm exhausted and I'm nauseous and I need you to help me make a meal? And you don't even know what meals to make because you don't even know how to use the kitchen. Like, when I think from the energetic component of pregnancy, Pregnancy for women is a very vulnerable state, which means we have to be able to lean on our men and feel protected, that we're going to be taken care of. And so if you don't feel like you can do that now, if you're looking at your man and you're like, I don't trust him. I don't think he can take care of me. I don't think he can do anything right. You're in a vulnerable state already. And so your emotions are heightened, your stress is heightened, therefore your inflammation is heightened. And so the chances of pregnancy can still happen, but you're just going to feed into that same cycle of, I don't trust him, I don't feel protected. I don't think he can take care of me. I'm anxious now. I'm growing a baby, and that's taking all my nutrients. I'm overwhelmed, even more so. And, like, you get the idea, the point of bringing the man in is so you can actually sit down and help him. And, like, I do this all the time. I'm always counseling my patients because doing the detoxing, taking the supplements, that's the easy part. It's the implementation and figuring out how you're going to shift and transform as a couple and how the woman is going to learn to express her emotions and how the man is going to learn to express his needs and his emotions and how you guys are going to grow together through that, that's the difficult part, you know, and that's the part that makes marriages really strong or really weak if you decide that you don't want to have the hard conversations and you just kind of continue to go your separate ways and build up that resentment. So the essence of it is, like I said, for women, is to be able to trust the man, not, like, physically Emotionally, energetically, it's spiritually like you can trust and lean on him, versus you're worried about him that he's going to have a heart attack because he's eating so poorly, he's not sleeping, he's drinking a bunch. All of this stuff. That's the real concern. And so sometimes having that third party can really help. And if you haven't had any helpless counseling and this is resonating for you, then I would highly recommend doing it. But from the fertility perspective, it's really important to make that connection and to make sure you guys are on the same page. Because bringing a baby in usually doesn't make things easier. It usually just outlines and brings out what was already there. So if you felt unseen, it's not that all of a sudden now that you're pregnant, you will feel more seen, you will actually probably struggle and there's, you know, more pain that's going to come up from that because if he doesn't know how to cook and you're really sick, then you're going to hold even more resentment towards him because he doesn't, he can't, he doesn't know how to take care of you. But here's what I'll say, and this is what I said to the male of this couple is sometimes he knows that she's upset, but he just ignores it. She's like, well, she's always upset. She's always want something from me and she's upset all the time because, you know, things are not, she's not actually expressing the reason that she's upset about, which is being unseen, unheard. I can't trust you. Like that's a very different reason than I'm tired of cleaning up after you. Which there's a truth to that component as well. Right? You might be tired of cleaning up, but the real reason is that you're having, you don't have somebody you trust that you're living with. For the male partner, what I told them is like, hey, don't have your head in the sand because you cannot have somebody who is super resentful towards you sleep in the same bed as you and that not impact you. That's a recipe for disaster. And we absolutely share our cortisol, AKA our stress hormones. So if someone's stressed, you're going to notice it, you're going to feel the other person's nervous system, you're sharing the same bed as them, you're going to feel that and vice versa. And so sometimes I've had to Teach my husband this, if you will. If I have a hard time expressing and there's something bothering me, and I'm kind of just ignoring him and, like, you know, because I don't really know how to say it or if I should. I'm processing. I get him to cue me and say, hey, it seems like something is bothering you, so then it can start that conversation. And that took a long time to get to. But I try to cue myself as well. If something is bothering me, I try to deal with it right away, because there's no way I want to go to bed frustrated like this. I don't want to carry that anger and frustration all day. I don't want to carry it at nighttime.

And in the morning, things are busy and you don't have time. You have to. So the goal is for you guys to create a relationship where you can actually help to support each other's growth. And that is what you're going to need to do if you want to have babies together that are emotionally regulated and emotionally mature. Or you can teach them that skill as they go. Because it's not something that I was taught to me, that's not something that was taught to my husband. It is something that we're talking about a lot more now, in a sense that I want to be able to regulate my emotions and understand how I process emotions and what emotions I feel so then I can connect with someone else and help them understand how I feel, and then I can teach that skill. But that skill is something that you need throughout your entire life. And so getting the man on board. Ladies, I think the most important thing that you need to do is to say, hey, you're 50% of the equation. You're important to me. This is important to me. Let's show up on this call together and let's see if this is the right thing for us so we can become the best, you know, the best parents that we can. I don't see a lot of men arguing with that. Sometimes I think you ladies have a hard time voicing that for whatever reason. But I think it is important for us to do that and to voice that, because when I have that objection in the chats, we're like, well, my husband can't show up. He's too busy with work. What happens when you're pregnant? What happens when you have a baby? He's still too busy with work. You can't show up on an appointment. You can't take supplements. You can't cook a good meal together like Those are all issues that are going to show up when you have babies. And they absolutely show up for everybody. And so my hope is that we can deal with that before you have the babies instead of assuming that it will just get better down the road. And when I look at, you know, success rates in my couples, the couples that show up together on every call and do all the things and, like, go in on this journey to transform, the success rate is so much higher for them because they're in on this together. It's not the woman trying to drag the man in, or usually it's not the man trying to drag the woman in, that's for sure. But it's, you know, you're willing to make the change. And then step by step, we set realistic expectations and off we go versus one person is off on the side and the other person is doing everything. You are a team. I want you to be a team because fertility is a team sport. And when, ladies, you are pregnant, you're going to. You need to feel like you can lean and be supported by your male. You need to feel like he can take care of you, he can protect you so you can bring down your armor because you have to, because all your nutrients, your energy is depleted. You need to be taken care of during pregnancy, and you need to be taken care in the first half of the cycle. And I think it's. A lot of it is us women teaching our men how to do that because they don't know it. Like this couple that I've been explaining, like, I'm not going to stand up for him because I think what he's doing isn't great. But, like, you also created this monster. You've been cleaning up after him since you've been married, since you've been dating. You've just been doing that for him. Oh, he can't do it right. Well, then teach him right. Like, we have to teach them how we like things. And part of a good marriage is just being good roommates. And so if he's not a good roommate, you need to let him know that you know. And it's, we have to teach people how to treat us. It's just going to take some time. And it's probably one of the more difficult conversations to have. It's very vulnerable. But this is where I say, ladies, reflect on your emotions and make sure you understand what emotion is driving. And usually it's, I don't feel seen, I don't feel hurt, I don't feel important, I don't feel Worthy. And so you're just doing it for the other person where in reality you need to be coming together. And like he doesn't know that's how you feel. He has no idea. He should, but he doesn't. It's like it's just not the way the men brains work.

And if you haven't heard the podcast with my husband jp, you should listen to it because it's like we've come a long way and we did not start with, you know, we are a lot further along now and there's a lot of growth that happens for both of us year after year. So the male involvement not just on the physical level is important from the sperm component, but on the energetic mental and emotional and the ability for the woman to step into her feminine energy and relax and create more peace and trust and intuition as opposed to the masculine energy where you're going out and you're doing all the things right. Healing is, and pregnancy is that feminine energy. And so we need to learn how to embody it. And we ladies get to experience that throughout our cycle. We get to experience more masculine energy through ovulation and more feminine energy in the second half of the cycle. And it's a beautiful dance. But I find that most women are just spending all the energy in the masculine and that's the imbalance. So learning how your emotions work, how your hormones work, and then what is it that you need in order to feel like you are taken care of. So probably not what you expected to hear in terms of how to get your male partner on board, but I do hope you find this helpful. I just really am using the cases that I'm seeing every day and what's going on for them and how, you know, I walk them through the implementation process and helping them find common language and helping them regulate their emotions. So then we can do all the detoxing stuff, all the supplements, the easy peasy things, if you will. Those things are, I don't want to say they're easy, but it's when you're together on a team, it's a lot easier to do that. And then the woman can relax. And when you relax, your nervous system relaxes, inflammation goes down, you can heal a lot faster. So the male involvement for me is non negotiable. So thank you guys for listening. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out on Instagram. Thank you for being here and we'll see you next week. Thank you so much for listening to read the full show notes of this episode including summary timestamps, guest quotes, and any resources that were mentioned on the episode. Visit drjanelevesque.com podcast and if you're getting value from these episodes, I'd love it if you took 2 minutes to share it with a friend. Rate and leave me a review@ratethispodcast.com Dr. Jane the reviews will help with the discoverability of the show, and who knows, I might share your review on my next episode. Thank you so much for tuning in. And let's make your fertility journey your healing journey.