If this title caught your attention, there is a good chance you’re carrying a question that feels uncomfortable to ask.

Maybe you’ve seen the stories online.

The intended parents and gestational carrier who text every day. The families who vacation together. The lifelong friendships that continue long after the baby is born.

Those relationships absolutely exist.

What doesn’t get talked about as often is that they are not the only version of a successful surrogacy journey.

Many intended parents quietly worry that something is wrong if the relationship doesn’t feel that close. Some gestational carriers wonder whether they should be feeling more connected than they do. Others find themselves comparing their relationship to stories they see online and wondering whether they are doing something wrong.

In our experience, that comparison often creates unnecessary pressure.

Healthy surrogate relationships do not all look the same.

Some relationships are deeply personal. Some are warm but structured. Some involve frequent communication. Others involve occasional check-ins and clear boundaries.

What matters is not whether the relationship looks a certain way.

What matters is whether it feels respectful, trustworthy, and supportive for the people involved.

One of the challenges in surrogacy is that there are very few relationships that compare to it. Two parties are working together toward something profoundly meaningful. There may be gratitude, admiration, affection, trust, and care. At the same time, there are contracts, boundaries, expectations, and separate lives that continue outside of the journey.

That combination can feel difficult to define.

Sometimes intended parents worry that maintaining boundaries will seem ungrateful.

Sometimes gestational carriers worry that wanting boundaries will seem uncaring.

In reality, boundaries are often what allow relationships to remain healthy.

Closeness and trust are not the same thing.

You can deeply trust someone without speaking every day.

You can care about someone without becoming best friends.

You can appreciate someone’s role in your journey without expecting the relationship to look a certain way after delivery.

One of the most common sources of tension in surrogacy is not conflict. It’s unspoken expectations.

One person imagines frequent communication. Another imagines occasional updates. One imagines a lifelong connection. Another imagines a meaningful relationship that naturally changes after the journey ends.

Neither person is necessarily wrong.

Problems often emerge when those expectations remain unspoken.

The strongest surrogate relationships are usually not the ones that look the closest from the outside. They’re the ones where both parties understand what the relationship is, what it isn’t, and how they want to navigate it together.

A successful surrogacy journey is not measured by how close you become. It’s measured by how safely you move through the journey together.

That may result in a lifelong friendship.

It may result in a meaningful connection that evolves over time.

It may result in a relationship that remains warm, appreciative, and respectful without becoming deeply intertwined.

All of those outcomes can be healthy.

A Few Things Worth Remembering

If your relationship with your surrogate does not look like the stories you see online, try not to assume something is missing.

Surrogacy relationships are deeply personal, and there is no single blueprint for what they should look like.

What often matters most is not the frequency of communication or the level of closeness.

It’s whether both parties feel respected, understood, and able to move through the journey with clear expectations.

A healthy surrogacy relationship doesn’t need to look extraordinary from the outside.

It simply needs to work for the people living it.

Meet Dr. Sadaf

Dr. Sadaf Sahibzada, PsyD, LMFT, is the founder of Embra Health, where she specializes in the psychological aspects of surrogacy, egg donation, sperm donation, embryo donation, and intended parent support. Through her writing, clinical work, and professional education, she is committed to helping people navigate family building with greater confidence while encouraging agencies and clinics to integrate mental health throughout the entire journey.