“It seems that when miscarriage affects couples, it may stimulate growth
or, conversely, unearth inability to support each other through troubling times,” says
Kristen M. Swanson, R.N., Ph.D., F.A.A.N., professor of family and child
nursing at the University of Washington. Swanson and colleagues interviewed
185 women
four times over the course of the year following their miscarriages, asking
open-ended questions about how the event affected their interpersonal and
sexual relationships with their mates.
The study appears in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine.
Some background factors appeared to help couples adjust to this loss. Swanson
reports that compared with those who felt closer, women whose interpersonal
or sexual relationships remained the same were more likely to have already
had children prior to the miscarriage, Swanson reports. They were also more
likely to have miscarried at an earlier gestational age than those who felt
more distant in these relationships.
However, one year after the miscarriage, 32 percent of women interviewed said
their interpersonal relationships were more distant than before. Thirty-nine
percent said their sexual relationships were more distant.
Distance in both kinds of relationships was associated with increased emotional
disturbance, including more depressed, anxious, confused and angry moods,
she says. Women who felt this distance tended to see their miscarriage as
a significant
loss, recall, recall the actual miscarriage as a devastating event, claim
they had “lost a baby,” and feel more isolated.
“Those whose interpersonal relationship was more distant feared trying
[to get pregnant] again, were unable to share the loss with their partners
and experienced more tension, and less love, communication, and support with
and from their mates,” Swanson says. “Women who were sexually
more distant avoided intercourse, experienced less desire and saw sex as
a functional
necessity, a fearful reminder of loss and a source of tension.”
Almost all of the couples were heterosexual, and more than 90 percent were
married, Swanson says. The researchers did not interview the partners of the
women who miscarried.
“When women felt that their male partners failed to do things to show
they cared, women perceived greater distance in their relationships,” Swanson
says. “However, when women perceived that their partners engaged in
mutual sharing of feelings and experiences, they claimed to be closer interpersonally
and sexually.”
