background: IVF treatment involves a reassessment of issues concerning autonomy and relatedness. This study aims to extend prior studies on the psychological impact of IVF/ICSI by studying the association between the personality dimensions of Self-Criticism and Dependency with the psychological well-being and quality of the couple relationship for women starting their first IVF treatment. methods: This is a cross-sectional study of 68 women starting their first IVF treatment at the Leuven

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... sity Fertility Centre of the University of Leuven, Belgium. All women were administered validated self-report measures assessing Self-Criticism and Dependency, negative life events, psychological well-being, relationship satisfaction, and relationship and sexual concerns. Pearson's correlation coefficients were calculated between all study variables, followed by four separate hierarchical multiple regression analyses for psychological wellbeing, relationship satisfaction, and relationship and sexual concerns. results: High Self-Criticism was negatively associated with psychological well-being (r ¼ 20.63, P , 0.001) and relationship satisfaction (r ¼ 20.29, P , 0.05), and positively associated with relationship (r ¼ 0.39, P , 0.01) and sexual (r ¼ 0.37, P , 0.01) concerns. High Dependency was negatively associated with psychological well-being (r ¼ 20.30, P , 0.05), not significantly associated with relationship satisfaction and relationship concerns, and positively related to sexual concerns (r ¼ 0.31, P , 0.05). conclusions: This cross-sectional study suggests that the personality dimensions of Self-Criticism and Dependency may enhance our understanding of the psychological well-being and quality of the couple relationship of women starting their first IVF treatment. However, further prospective research on this topic is needed.