I know.
I wish I didn’t have to share this with you this way.
But this is the reason I discovered Andrew Schulz.
Yes, I’m talking about comedian Andrew Schulz’s sperm.
But first, let me give you some context.
Like every morning, while I get ready, I listen to a podcast.
Any podcast? No, not just any podcast. I have my list of favourites, one of them being Chris Williamson’s Modern Wisdom.
Mind you.
I only listen if I’m interested in the guest, but for some reason I can’t quite explain, I hit play on an interview between Chris and an American comedian I’d never heard of before: Andrew Schulz.
Schulz is known for his unapologetic, brutally honest comedy. What I didn’t expect was to hear him open up about something as deeply personal as infertility.
Yep, infertility.
The big couple destroyer.
The big taboo, “let’s not talk about this while we’re eating, please”.
Chris started asking him about it in great detail because Andrew, in his latest stand-up special, Life, lays it all out, his entire journey through it.
And here’s where it gets interesting. Because, as he points out, when a couple struggles to conceive, the automatic assumption tends to be that the issue lies with the woman.
Society, medical professionals, even friends and family… everyone’s default setting is to assume it’s her body that’s not ‘working properly’.
Except… what if it isn’t?
That was exactly Schulz’s situation.
The issue was on his side. And he talks about the shock of realising this, the stigma, the unspoken shame that often comes with it.
All his life, like everyone else, he assumed he’d never have a problem like that.
We all think like that. It’s called invulnerability bias. We automatically assume that the bad or negative things in life only happen to other people.
Not us. Never us. Other people.
Infertility? He probably thought that was something that happened to other people, women, not him.
Until it did.
And truthfully, there isn’t much information about what men go through when they’re the ones struggling with infertility, or how they can be better supported.
And the reality is, both in the interview with Chris and in his stand-up, you can tell, through the jokes, just how hard it must have been for him.
Especially that feeling of guilt, that overwhelming sense of responsibility for something that, in reality, isn’t anyone’s fault. It just is.
It happened to him. And that’s incredibly unfair.
He was struggling. He felt guilty because, due to his issue, his wife had to go through the whole hormonal process, the injections, everything, just to continue with the treatment.
At one point, he even apologised to her for, in a way, forcing her to go through this experience for something that was, at first, his problem.
But here’s the moment that really got me. His wife, instead of treating it as his problem, like he was doing, simply told him, “This isn’t your problem, it’s our problem. And we’ll get through it together.”
Now that, right there, is what I call relationship standards.
Forget all that social media nonsense about what’s important in a relationship, from the ultra stupidity that is the sole concept of “body count” to the people claiming “I’m looking for a man in finance, trust fund, 6’5”, blue eyes.”
Focus on what really matters: unconditional support when life hits you hard (hits you both hard).
Aka, commitment.
Good quality never comes without commitment.
Oh, and I forgot to mention…I was crying my eyes out at that point in the stand-up special. I’m not hiding!
If there’s one thing I absolutely love about comedians, it’s their ability to use humour as a way to process even the deepest pain.
You’ve probably heard the old saying that the funniest person in the room is often the one suffering the most inside.
It’s not always true, of course, but there’s something about comedy that allows people to make sense of the messiest, hardest parts of life.
Some use humour as a defence mechanism, a way to avoid dealing with things. But others, like Schulz, use it as catharsis.
Meaning: a way to take something painful and turn it into something that not only helps them but also connects with others who might be going through the same thing.
You see…
You never really know what someone else is carrying.
We walk around assuming that our struggles are uniquely ours. That we’re the ones dealing with something difficult while everyone else just breezes through life effortlessly.
But that’s never the case, is it?
The grass-is-greener mentality makes it easy to forget that.
Behind closed doors, people are battling things we know nothing about. And not everybody does a netflix special to talk about it!
Schulz, the guy who makes people laugh for a living, was going through something heartbreaking. And yet, he found a way to turn it into something meaningful, something that might help others going through the same thing feel less alone.
So.
If you or someone you know is dealing with infertility, I can’t recommend his Netflix special enough. You’ll feel seen. You’ll feel understood. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll find a new way to look at things.
Now, I’ll be honest with you, Schulz’s story has a happy ending. Which is wonderful… but I know that’s not the case for everyone.
Still, whether or not there’s a happy ending waiting on the other side, there’s something powerful about hearing someone else say: I’ve been there too.
He had to go through the grief, the disappointment, the pressure of forcing himself to cum in a plastic cup, the embarrassment of having to deal with the whole process, the tension, the hope, the pain…
And sometimes, that’s exactly what we need. Knowing that we all suffer, but we don’t have to do it alone.
You will scream with laughter, and you will cry your eyes out just like I did. Watch it in any case.
Watch the special on Netflix here.
Love,
Noemi
P.S. To listen to the interview on Chris’s podcast, click here. And to watch his Netflix stand-up special, click here.
