In this interview, Bernadette Boas discusses how couples trying to conceive often lose sight of the original, pleasure‑based purpose of sexual intimacy, focusing solely on reproduction. She explains that this shift creates psychological friction that can hinder conception. Boas emphasizes that infertility is rarely solved by a single intervention; instead, a multifaceted assessment—often taking four months—identifies medical, emotional, and relational obstacles. Drawing on her Harvard Master’s in Public Health research, she shares data on couples who succeeded after multiple IVF failures and miscarriages, highlighting key characteristics that predict better outcomes. The conversation underscores the importance of restoring enjoyment to sex, removing negative mental scripts, and applying an integrative, evidence‑based approach to improve both sexual satisfaction and fertility success.
Chapters
partner. It's almost like people who are trying to get pregnant forget the primary reason to have sex and focus solely on reproduction, which, sure, for our ancestors that may have very well been the priority and the primary reason, but really, I mean, even they did it for enjoyment, you know. And so that, as a kind of— why do you think that it is enjoyable to begin with? Because otherwise you wouldn't do it.
So would you— your work then help them work through getting them to identify the negative or the things that are holding them back as far as enjoying sex for pleasure versus just reproduction, and then finding them the way through and guiding them through that, that change so they can, once they stop so overthinking or over-negative drama about it, they can just relax.
You see, it would be so nice if I could say yes to that answer, and, you know, it would be so nice if that was the only thing. The point, however, is this, is that when people are struggling to get pregnant and conceive, it's usually never a simple solution, right? It's never just a one-thing solution that's going to actually get them to overcome their challenge, because, you know, what happens is that there are so many different pieces that get in the equation. However, if we don't address that part, right, as a way of making sure that we remove the friction, no pun intended, because this would be not good friction, right? But, uh, if we remove the obstacles, remove the things that are actually not getting in the— that are getting in the way to creating the opposite outcome to what we want to create, then we don't get a result. So yes, it's absolutely essential to look at that as a component. But if I can give you a bit of an insight, what happens is that even before we talk about that, there's usually like 4 months worth of work to figure out why they're not conceiving and keeping a pregnancy when they're having sex to begin with, right?
Right.
So that's the thing. And also, you know, I did a study which was part of my master's in public health at Harvard, and we looked at our results and we looked at what— who were the couples that we were able to help, what were their characteristics, how long they were trying get pregnant, you know, what, how many of them had experienced failed IVF treatments and miscarriages and all of that.
