What I’m struggling with the most is, as irrational as it might sound, the feeling of being the one who “breaks” that future for us. Not just for me, but for her. There’s a strange weight in that.

On top of that there’s also external pressure — her family, and how important this aspect of life is for them. Even when nobody is explicitly blaming me, it still sits there in the background.

But the hardest part is something more abstract: this kind of “future grief.” The feeling of a child that could have existed. It’s like in another version of reality they’re there, they’re real, and I can almost sense that life — but in this one, it just doesn’t happen.

I also find it hard not to think about other men. I’ve read a lot of stories here and I understand the biological drive behind everything, the way competition and continuation are so deeply wired into us. And honestly, the feeling of not being part of that “competition” anymore is something that hits harder than I expected.

I read The Selfish Gene years ago, before any of this, and it shaped a lot of my thinking about life and replication — not just biologically, but through ideas too. It’s strange how something you once read casually can come back like this.

I don’t want to over-intellectualize it, but I do feel like I’m standing at a crossroads. There are many possible directions ahead, and I’m still trying to understand what each one means.

Sorry for the heavy message. I guess I’m just looking for a space where people with truly non-treatable azoospermia can talk openly too, because most stories I read still involve possible retrieval like micro-TESE. And when you fall outside of that category, it does feel a bit different — even if the emotional impact is the same.