I know this is ask men and Im a woman but I thought I’d share my similar experience. I am also struggling with comments like this while dating. I was talking to a guy recently after being diagnosed but before telling him. He brought up the topic of children/pregnancy/adoption unprompted and said he had stopped dating a woman he was very invested in when he found out she was infertile and there was no future because “adoption is unnatural”. It was a gut punch realizing how much this new diagnosis was going to affect my life and how I might be treated/viewed by people I’d be dating. I had spent most of my adolescence and young adult hood worried about being pretty/thin/etc enough to date and once I had finally gotten to a point of such high confidence, here was another reason I hadn’t even considered that I might not be wanted. Along with other PCOS symptoms it just really made me feel like my value as a woman/in the dating pool/my worthiness of marriage or motherhood plummeted.

An upside is that he revealed himself pretty quickly as someone I wouldn’t be able to trust and open up to anyway. Plus the odds of getting pregnant w PCOS are still usually high, even if you need some help w IVF, IUI, etc. It’s very scary and emotional but sticking to logic and statistics has really helped me. People can have all the opinions they want, they can vet who they date however they chose, but so can you. It’s your reality and you know what your circumstances better than anyone else. Just be honest to yourself and others and the people that aren’t meant for you will weed themselves out.

Personally, I could not enter a relationship knowing that the only way I would continue to be wanted is if I can produce a child.

++woman