Celebrity
Jennifer Aniston, 53, Reveals Desperate IVF Struggle And Regret At Not Freezing Her Eggs
The actress will one day write a book about her infertility struggle, saying she no longer feels as though she has anything to hide.
The 53-Year-Old has bared it all, physically and emotionally in an interview with Allure. Jennifer Aniston opened up about her desperate struggle to conceive while admitting that the constant rumors of not being able to bore children for her former partners made the infertility battle all the more difficult. She slammed the speculation that both Brad Pitt and Justin Theroux divorced her because she wouldn’t give them children.
The actress claimed she feels regret at not deciding to freeze her eggs when she was younger.
And added that she threw everything at her infertility battle, including drinking Chinese teas and going through IVF.
Jennifer told the publication, “I was trying to get pregnant. It was a challenging road for me, the baby-making road. All the years and years and years of speculation. It was really hard. I was going through IVF, drinking Chinese teas, you name it. I was throwing everything at it,”. She added she wishes someone had told her to freeze her eggs when she was younger.
The Former Friends star, who appeared on the cover of Allure’s December Issue, wowing in a tiny Chanel bra, insisted she has now come to terms with the fact that she will never conceive children.
“I would’ve given anything if someone had said to me, ‘Freeze your eggs. Do yourself a favor.’ You just don’t think it. So here I am today. The ship has sailed,” Jennifer said, noting that she somewhat feels some relief in the fact that the possibility of having children is no longer lingering over her as a never-ending maybe. During her marriage to Justin, now 51, she had faced scrutiny, with reports at the time suggesting their breakup was her inability to have kids.
In February 2018, months after her split from Justin, People Magazine reported the pair tried for children, but that it didn’t work out, with a source saying that Jennifer was sad it never happened but that it never consumed her.
With age has come a new-found sense of confidence in herself as the actress told Allure that she no longer cares what people say or think about her. “I would say my late 30s, 40s, I’d gone through hard s*** and if it wasn’t going through that, I would’ve never become who I was meant to be. That’s why I have such gratitude for all those s****y things. Otherwise, I would’ve been stuck being this person that was so fearful, so nervous, so unsure of who they were. And now, I don’t f***king care.”
Jennifer now feels the best in who she’s today, explaining she has learned to stop saying ‘bad s*** to herself.
The actress stated she’s been through what she describes as a period that was challenging and is only now coming back into the light having done some personal work that was long overdue and faced up to issues that had been part of her life since childhood. Jennifer, known for her appearance in Friends from 1994 until 2004, also admitted she was too focused on her career to think her future self might one day want to settle down and have children.
She hit out at the constant scrutiny she faced for not getting pregnant during her five-year marriage to Pitt, now 58.
“I just cared about my career. And God forbid a woman is successful and doesn’t have a child. And the reason my husband left me, why we broke up and ended our marriage, was because I wouldn’t give him a kid. It was absolute lies. I don’t have anything to hide at this point.” Jennifer hinted she might one day, however, pen a book about her lengthy infertility struggles, a thing she had kept hidden from the world for years out of a need to protect herself.
“I am going to [write a book] one day. I’m going to stop saying, ‘I can’t write,” the ageless beauty alleged.
She continued: “I’ve spent so many years protecting my story about IVF. I’m so protective of these parts because I feel like there’s so little that I get to keep to myself. The world creates narratives that aren’t true, so I might as well tell the truth. I feel like I’m coming out of hibernation. I don’t have anything to hide.” The interview also saw Jennifer speak of her complicated relationship with her parents, John and Nancy. The pair were both actors and they divorced when she was nine.
“I think my mom’s divorce screwed her up,” Jennifer said.
And further shared: “Back in that generation it wasn’t like, ‘Go to therapy, talk to somebody. Why don’t you start microdosing? You are going through life and picking up your child with tears on your face and you don’t have any help.” However, the actress became estranged from her mom after she released a memoir titled From Mother and Daughter to Friends in 1999, in which she shared details on Jennifer’s childhood and their relationship.
But now, Jennifer told Allure she has eventually forgiven both her mom, who died in May 2016, and her father.
“It’s important,” she said of the forgiveness. “It’s toxic to have that resentment, that anger. I learned that by watching my mom never let go of it. I remember saying, ‘Thank you for showing me what never to be.’ So that’s what I mean about taking the darker things that happen in our lives, the not-so happy moments, and trying to find places to honor them because of what they had given to us.“
