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Among married men and women who undergo surgical sterilization through a vasectomy or a tubal ligation, it has been estimated that anywhere from 10 to 20 percent will come to regret the choice.
Sometimes there may be an immediate awareness of wrongdoing following the surgery, while in other cases, as Patrick Coffin, radio host and author of Sex au Naturel notes, sterilized couples may “. . . drift for years before acknowledging that something between them is no longer in sync. After the initial pregnancy fear subsides, and the vision of 1001 erotic nights turns out be something of a scam, spouse may (subtly) turn against spouse while doing their best to ignore the silent, disturbing ‘presence’ of the choice they made.”
Their decision to seek out a permanent form of contraception can also affect their marriage in other important ways. As Dr. John Billings has noted, there is “an effect that is even more tragic than the clinical, and it is that in many cases the use of contraceptive methods in marriage has been followed by an act of infidelity of one of the members.