The aim of this study was primarily to identify the factors which inform the decision to end IVF-treatment, and to consider the ways in which the unsuccessful engagement with IVF marked both the experience of infertility and the participants' own perceptions of that technology. The study also hoped to explore the ways in which those feelings might change over time and the influence they might have on subsequent choices. The data is drawn from a series of in-depth interviews with 15 women whose male partners chose not to be interviewed and 13 couples, all of whom had had at least one cycle of IVF, with the most recent cycle no later than 1997.