Infertility is a stressor that affects the infertile couple. Coping of infertile couples with the unfulfilled desire for a child is affected by numerous variables. Depending on the diagnose is the patients were assigned to four groups: Group 1: female infertility (infertile women of fertile men), Group 2: infertility of the men, Group 3: infertility of both partners, Group 4: idiopathic sterility). One hundred and ten infertile couples were investigated with the Freiburg questionnaire of Coping with Illness. Compared to their partners, the women of infertile couples report a higher feature rating in the cales "depressional coping" and "self-distraction and self-stabilisation". Women of infertile couples show lower feature ratings compared to the standardised collective of patients with chronic somatic disease only on the scale "religiousness and search for meaning". Involuntarily childless men activate all coping strategies to a smaller extent than the reference sample. The experience of infertility is greatly affected by gender and the associated role expectations.

The subjective well-being of infertile couples is affected by numerous variables. One hundred and ten infertile couples were investigated using the von Zerssen symptom checklist. With the exception of sterile women of fertile men (group 1: female infertility), women and men in the overall randomized sample and the diagnostic groups (group 2: subfertility of the man; group 3: sterility of both partners; group 4: idiopathic sterility) report fewer general symptoms than the overall population of patients with somatic and psychiatric diseases. Subfertile men show lower rating in the symptom checklist than the norm. Involuntarily childless women express more symptoms than their partners.

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