Jennifer Aniston shared some of the details from her difficult fertility journey for the first time, but clarified that she is ultimately happy that she didn’t have kids and put her energy into her career instead.

The Friends star revealed in Allure‘s December issue that she tried for many years to conceive, but “it was a challenging road for me, the baby-making road.” That challenging road involved multiple unsuccessful rounds of IVF, all while the tabloids furiously speculated about whether or not she was secretly pregnant. Aniston continued, “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. 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.”

But while the moment for her to have children may have passed, the actor confirmed, “I have zero regrets.” She added, “I actually feel a little relief now because there is no more, ‘Can I? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.’ I don’t have to think about that anymore.” But Aniston noted that tabloid headlines regarding her decision whether or not to have a child were hurtful, what was equally painful was “the narrative that I was just selfish.” She said, “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.” Aniston explained, “I got so frustrated. Hence that op-ed I wrote [for The Huffington Post in 2016, slamming the media for its obsession with her being pregnant and its treatment of women, generally]. I was like, ‘I’ve just got to write this because it’s so maddening and I’m not superhuman to the point where I can’t let it penetrate and hurt.’”

In that op-ed, Aniston wrote, “For the record, I am not pregnant. What I am is fed up. I’m fed up with the sport-like scrutiny and body shaming that occurs daily under the guise of ‘journalism,’ the ‘First Amendment’ and ‘celebrity news.’” She went on to say, “I used to tell myself that tabloids were like comic books, not to be taken seriously, just a soap opera for people to follow when they need a distraction. But I really can’t tell myself that anymore because the reality is the stalking and objectification I’ve experienced first-hand, going on decades now, reflects the warped way we calculate a woman’s worth.”

Emily Kirkpatrick

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