Hello. This post will mention biological aspects of s*x in quite a specific manner. I am sorry to be blunt. I don't know how else to express it. Please try and remember I really am asking in good faith

Please also if you are a man, don't ignore this. I wish men would not refuse to engage with these subjects just because they are a little squeamish. It is very important because it will surely effect your spouse and children too. Also I just want to hear many people's thoughts including men.

1 - natural?
I have long heard of NFP as 'working with a woman's body instead of against it'.

This to me seems to be outright false. A woman experiences most s*xual desire when she is fertile, and the least when she is not fertile. I know for me I have essentially no libido on infertile days, and very high libido on fertile days (I am sorry to be so blunt).

In this sense it seems to actively work against a woman's biology. Because she can 'only' have s*x with her husband when she does not really want it, and she cannot have s*x when she really does want it. So for many women it would almost rule out the ability to enjoy and desire s*x at all.

And not wanting or enjoying s*x is not just a lack of positive experience. It often is actually negative. Because if a woman is not very aroused, frequently her vagina will be too tight (not relaxed - the v@gina consists of smooth muscle), and not adequately lubricated, for s*x to be anything other than painful.

This means that for a significant portion of women, the only person who can ever really experience enjoyable, consistently non-painful s*x is the husband.

Of course I am generalising. It depends on individual women's hormones, anatomy, and the anatomy of their husbands. But it will surely effect every woman to a some extent, and a significant number women to a significant extent, such that it seriously impacts their ability to be intimate with their husbands.

This leaves many women with only three options:
- Always abstain unless you are okay to have a child at that time. This means if you can only support 3 children, you and your spouse may only enjoy intercourse as little as 3 times in your entire marriage (statistically, probably more than that but certainly very rarely)
- Have intercourse which your husband can enjoy, and you cannot. This seems to go directly against the idea that contraception encourages men (or spouses in general) to objectify and 'use' their wife. If the wife is only ever just 'lying there and taking it', is this not dehumanising?
- Have intercourse whenever and get many consecutive pregnancies and many many children (which for health and practical reasons is obviously not always possible).

I have not seen anybody address these biological aspects of NFP. The only time I have seen women address it was in a joking manner, like 'We never have s*x when I desire my husband, and we only have s*x when I don't desire him!' But that's not funny. I think that's terribly, terribly sad.

Many people say to me, well, what did women do before contraception? They suffered. They died. Childbirth has been something like the first or second biggest cause of human death in history, after malaria (depending on how you count it). Also, women hit puberty later - maybe got their period, say, at age 16 - starvation was common and affected fertility and miscarriages. Women were often breastfeeding one or more babies at a time and were therefore not fertile during that time, so women were capably of being pregnant for less of their lives. Finally, they did not have massive families even if they did get constantly pregnant because many of the babies just died. But now we don't accept people dying, babies don't constantly die these days, people aren't starving, puberty hits later, and not everyone does or is able to breastfeed.

2 - effective?
Now I have a second question: its effectiveness. It does have a ~99% effectiveness (for symptoms-based) if used perfectly. This assumes, firstly, that you have a regular, predictable menstrual cycle (I certainly never have and can only tell what happened after my menstrual cycle has finished, when I have the full picture). If you do not then you cannot use it. It also assumes you can wake the same time every single day and take your temperature or mucus. Symptoms-based NFP has an up to 25% efficacy for typical use. That is, for 100 average couples using it for 1 year, 25 of them will get pregnant. That is not very effective. And once again, many people cannot use it at all. (lactational amenhorrea - breastfeeding - is more effective but obviously not every women is currently or is able to breastfeed for a significant period of time).

But, let's say, you do use NFP perfectly. You have a perfect regular cycle and you do everything at the same time every day. Then your effectiveness is 99%. This is more effective than perfect use of a male or female c*ondom, or typical use of various pills and hormonal BC. If the point of NFP is that it is still open to life, surely these other less effective methods are also equally, if not more open to life? The intention for all these uses may not be, in any case, to completely avoid children, but perhaps just to delay them, or space them out, for serious health or practical reasons. And one could say that that remaining possible chance of pregnancy is up to God, and if you do get pregnant, you will not have an @bortion but will accept it from God.

I am not saying that nobody should use NFP or that everyone will be fine and dandy with other forms of contraception. But, I am saying that there are unchangeable biological and hormonal differences with people and probably a large plurality of women cannot effectively use NFP and may not respond so negatively to, say, hormonal contraception.

I would like some response to this... the response to my questions has always been awkwardness and confusion. It seems everyone who explained it to me did not even know or consider these aspects of women's biology and I think that is very sad.

What NFP is doing in "working with a woman's body" is recognizing her natural fertility cycles. This allows the couple with a grave reason to postpone pregnancy to engage in the marital act during infertile times and hence postpone conception. NFP doesn't guarantee that either partner will actually want to engage in the marital act when during the infertile times, however. That's just a different matter altogether.

You are also definitely describing an extreme situation. It is surely true in many, perhaps most, cases that a couple will be most amorous during fertile times. This does not generally translate into either spouse having absolutely no interest in sex during infertile times. A person for whom that is the case has a special cross to bear, and that is a serious thing, but in my relatively long life I have never actually spoken with anyone before you who has mentioned this particular problem.

More, you write "Because she can 'only' have s*x with her husband when she does not really want it, and she cannot have s*x when she really does want it. So for many women it would almost rule out the ability to enjoy and desire s*x at all." But this is a serious misstatment. A husband and wife can engage in the marital act anytime (I mean, within reason and the law, of course). If they choose not to, for some grave reason, this is a sacrifice they make because they have decided that at the present they are not called to welcome a new child. This woman you describe can engage in the marital act, she chooses not to, for some grave reason. It is again quite rare that a couple's reason for abstaining from the marital act is some kind of life-threatening situation: in a case like that, the wife may indeed be "forced" to abstain from sex during fertile times, and again this is a cross to bear. But not normal.


NFP does not work for everyone. That is true. Though, again, in most cases it works quite well. The fact that some couples with a grave reason to postpoine childbirth may not be able to use NFP might be sad, but it doesn't tell us anything about NFP as such.

If your worry, really, is that you have heard naive people pretending that NFP is a perfect, flawless, thing, then your worry is granted. I've heard some people make silly claims about NFP in the past. But NFP isn't perfect. It's a tool. It works well for many people. It doesn't work well for others. In all cases, it is at best a sorry substitute for true fruitfulness in a fallen world.

That is a grim perspective. My husband and I did natural family planning from the beginning. (Happily I'm past the age of needing it). So a couple of things to factor in.

1. The most commonly prescribed pill ie the combination pill, suppresses ovulation so that naturally diminishes the hormonal response due to ovulation anyway.

2. The progesterone only pill doesn't suppress ovulation but works more on preventing the uterus from sustaining a fertilised egg. So that is in effect an abortifacient.

3. Desire doesn't disappear altogether after ovulation. Sex is still satisfying. In our case, as we got older the predictability worked well for us. Does anyone continue to want high energy, passionate sex into old age?

It's not as grim as you might think as a young person. We're in our 60's now and have no regrets about using nfp.

As a woman who used NFP before I was Catholic, let me take a swing.

Re: desire

I desire many things, today there are leftover donuts in the breakroom. I know they are fresh and delicious. I want to go eat those donuts, my stomach growls, I salivate just thinking about them.

At the same time, I have made the decision to only eat bread on Saturday mornings. I will enjoy my bread and jelly on Saturday morning even a little more than I would the donuts. I am able to delay the gratification from eating that I would have today in spite of my crazy desire (seriously, I saw a blueberry sour cream donut in there!!).

The same goes for marital sex. There were times when one or both of us had such desire, but, maybe we had to get up super early for a meeting the next day, or one of us was under the weather or the baby was crying or the dog threw up... or, we had made the decision together that right now was not the time when we could welcome another life. That blueberry donut was still sooooooooo appealing, but, we knew that there was another time.

At the same time, there were occasions when my body gave fertility signs and we said "what the heck".

I HATED hormones, I tried the sponge - it was a disposable version of a diaphragm - it was painful and icky. It was frankly liberating to understand the signs my body was giving.

Also, the "regular mestrual cycles" thing only applies to the old fashioned "rhythm/calendar days method".

As a life long insomniac, there was no way I could get the sleep required for a temp method. My schedule was insane, I could not do anything at the same time every day. I used a method called Billings or BOMA. It has been successful even in places were the women are illiterate. The only think I had to do was wipe when I went pee.

Not every method works for every person, it is important to find a method that works with your life. How I envy young women now, there is tech that is as simple as wearing a bracelet.

Seriously, I taught my son the basics of how the female body works, if I'd had a daughter she would have learned to observe her signs as soon as she hit puberty. Knowledge of one's body is important for many things. It is tragic that people today do not learn how the female body functions, there are young adults who do not even know the names for their anatomy parts!

Anyway, I'd be happy to talk privately if you want to PM me.