Disagreement over NFP

[Xantippe]

First, please remember that buying a house in this economy is not the end all and be all that it was for our parents. You may find renting a house more to your liking.

Second, I would not quit a job in this economy without having another one ready to roll. Unemployment is nasty. I am not sure your field, but it is not fun being on the outside looking in. If nothing else, benefits are nearly as important as the take home pay.

Ok, I think I gave you enough food for thought. God bless and good luck!

Right.

I’d also recommend doing a house rental (if possible) before jumping in and buying. It will give you a better idea of the level of responsibility and time commitment involved. Dave Ramsey recommends waiting a year before getting married before buying a house, and I think that’s a good rule of thumb. Getting a chance to observe your sweetie in their natural habitat can provide a lot of important clues as to how much space you guys can handle, how handy he is, how handy you are, how big a slob you are/he is, whether you could build a house together, whether you could do a renovation together, how much house work it is reasonable to expect you to do yourselves, how you actually feel about home ownership versus fun, etc.

Definitely don’t buy a house while both working these travel jobs.

A 20% downpayment is not totally necessary, but what is necessary is having a big enough downpayment to bring your monthly mortgage payment down to something you can manage.

 

[Allegra]

Hello,

I’m recently engaged and will be getting married this coming summer. My fiancé and I both travel 2-4 weeks per month for work and graduated college relatively recently. At this point in our lives, having a child would mean both of us needing to quit our jobs since the only role at our company we qualify for is this 50-75% travel role. Additionally, we are saving to pay for a wedding and hopefully buy a house, but we haven’t had many years of saving and we want to be on a stronger financial foot before having a child, particularly with the job transition consideration. We’d also like to have some time to grow in our relationship as husband and wife.

For these reasons, we’re on the same page about waiting to have children for a few years after marriage and we plan to practice NFP. Of course, we’ll lovingly accept any children even if it happens earlier than we’re planning, but we’d like to do our best to plan logically. As I’ve done more research into NFP, I’ve learned that the abstinence period is typically 10-14 days. This is much longer than my fiancé expected, and he’s very disappointed and thinks that number sounds wrong/high. The question also came up about our wedding night/honeymoon. He of course wants to have sex on our wedding night and honeymoon (as do I), but we’re on different pages bout what to do if I’m fertile at that time.

He seems to think that the chances of getting pregnant are very low, even when fertile, but I found that the odds are actually more like 30%. Additionally, he feels like our marriage won’t be valid until we have sex and that a sexless honeymoon is almost a waste of a honeymoon. I understand what he’s saying, but I don’t want to throw our plans to the wind just because society expects us to have sex on our honeymoon. If we’re waiting this long to have sex, what’s another week of waiting if it’s the best decision for us as a family? Also, if our honeymoon is 2 weeks long, we’re almost guaranteed to be able to have sex even with NFP at some point during that time frame. Sex is not the reason we are getting married, and I’m hurt that he’s acting like these facts about reproductive cycles are my fault or my doing.

I guess I’m looking for (name removed by moderator)ut/advice…am I in the wrong? Is he in the wrong? Has anybody else been through this experience?

My experience with Creighton NFP is really different from what you’ve come up with by research. While my cycles are really irregular and fluctuate a great deal from month to month, my charts rarely require me to abstain for more than eight days. (though we generally choose to abstain during menses as well)

I also feel like the 30% number seems to be really off. I think that your chances of conception when you know you are in your fertile period are WAY higher than that. We’ve attempted to get pregnant twice and conceived in the first month both times. If you know you are in your fertile time, and you don’t have any reason to believe you or your husband have problems with infertility, I think you can pretty much assume you will conceive if you have sex during that time.

Regarding the wedding night/honeymoon, I think your fiancé is putting a great deal of undue pressure on the both of you. At risk of being indelicate, sometimes sex doesn’t happen the first night. My husband and I weren’t really able to fully consummate our union until we were comfortable in our own home, in our own bed. I encourage to plan your honeymoon without the expectation that you are going to spend 90% of the time in bed and the rest in the shower, because you may be setting yourself up for disappointment. Use that time to bond and just be together. If sex happens, great! But don’t plan the whole thing around sex.

Anyway, get good instruction on NFP in the months prior to your wedding and you will have a much better idea of how predictable your cycles are and how many days of abstinence to expect.

 

[Xantippe]

Regarding the wedding night/honeymoon, I think your fiancé is putting a great deal of undue pressure on the both of you. At risk of being indelicate, sometimes sex doesn’t happen the first night. My husband and I weren’t really able to fully consummate our union until we were comfortable in our own home, in our own bed. I encourage to plan your honeymoon without the expectation that you are going to spend 90% of the time in bed and the rest in the shower, because you may be setting yourself up for disappointment. Use that time to bond and just be together. If sex happens, great! But don’t plan the whole thing around sex.

Right–one of the booby prizes for chastity can be issues with consummation.

tolovehonorandvacuum.com/2011/05/sex-hurts-tense-up-vaginismus/

If the honeymoon were only about sex, there’d be no point in leaving home.

 

[Kelfa28]

My general advice for heading into sex on fertile days is to just plan on getting pregnant. Go into it with the intention of having a baby instead of an attitude of “well, there is only a 30% chance of us conceiving so the odds are in our favor!”

At least when the test is positive you’re not surprised.

It really depends on how serious you are about waiting.

If the wedding and/or part of the honeymoon are on fertile days…well, are you comfortable with having a baby?

If so, go for it! Have a good time and start trolling Pinterest for nursery themes.

If not…mourn the loss and move on.

You won’t be fertile all the time and it will happen when it does.

There have been plenty of times where hubby and I were just frustrated we couldn’t take advantage of non-fertile days.

Kids, work schedules not lining up favorably, deployments (try avoiding when hubby is either about to leave for a deployment or come home from a deployment…I’ve done both and it’s worse then avoiding on a wedding night), vacations (it’s not just the honeymoon that may not work out).

Plus, it really depends on how serious you are about avoiding.

Right now I’m dead serious. Sure I pour my heart out on CAF at 3 am when I’m totally stressed, depressed and sleep deprived but I soldier on.

Hubby and I plan on taking some fun vacations with the girls when we are a little more comfy financially but I’m not stressing or mourning the loss of potentially not having sex while on vacation. Not getting pregnant is more important.

Last year my husband took me out for my birthday on this totally romantic date. High end restaurant, the ballet and a nice hotel and we had a good time and went to bed…nothing happened.
Yeah, it was disappointing but we got over it.

 

[Xantippe]

There have been plenty of times where hubby and I were just frustrated we couldn’t take advantage of non-fertile days.

Kids, work schedules not lining up favorably, deployments (try avoiding when hubby is either about to leave for a deployment or come home from a deployment…I’ve done both and it’s worse then avoiding on a wedding night), vacations (it’s not just the honeymoon that may not work out).

Plus, it really depends on how serious you are about avoiding.

Right now I’m dead serious. Sure I pour my heart out on CAF at 3 am when I’m totally stressed, depressed and sleep deprived but I soldier on.

Hubby and I plan on taking some fun vacations with the girls when we are a little more comfy financially but I’m not stressing or mourning the loss of potentially not having sex while on vacation. Not getting pregnant is more important.

Last year my husband took me out for my birthday on this totally romantic date. High end restaurant, the ballet and a nice hotel and we had a good time and went to bed…nothing happened.
Yeah, it was disappointing but we got over it.

Yes.

I’m fully expecting that if/when my husband and I finally manage to do a few nights away from our kids for our 20th anniversary in three years, I should probably plan to take a good book…

Now that I think of it, we did also do one ski trip with my family as newlyweds. However, as luck would have it, I was in the middle of a frustrating 50+ day cycle at the time, so we had a gorgeous hotel room all to ourselves, no responsibilities, and no sex at all. (I think that one was probably caused by end of term graduate school stress. I took a pregnancy test and it was negative.)

 

[SusanneT]

Copied from other thread.

Not that I’m looking to be the bearer of bad news…but 10-14 days of abstinence for NFP is typical to low end.

My cycles are really short and we end up abstaining for most of the month when using STM…which was the only method I really learned.

We abstain upwards of 20 days of a 30 day month…and I’ve still managed to get pregnant.

But every woman is different…even the same woman can have different cycles too.

Also…we’ve never actually had the chance to be just “husband and wife” because we had kids immediately and just kept having kids.

I’ve been married almost 4 years and have 3 kids.

You can get pregnant on the first try during your fertile period…that is what it’s designed to do…get you pregnant.

Every time we’ve had sex on my fertile period…I’ve gotten pregnant. I’m batting 100% at this point.

So, I’m totally jaded when it comes to NFP at this point. But there is a reality when it comes to NFP.

A cold and hard reality that it’s not all sunshine and roses and designed to make your marriage this fairytale.
For some of us it’s a huge cross to bear.
That is the truth.

You and your fiancé need to understand this. It’s not contraception…it doesn’t work the same way as the pill or condoms.

It’s totally different and can be a huge challenge.

I honestly believe that couples really shouldn’t enter marriage unless they are seriously ready for kids.

Besides…my husband and I are still a regular married couple and didn’t miss out too much on married life without kids.

For the record we were the same when we used NFP my cycle was fairly short 26-28 days and I know I fell pregnant in the first phase several times leaving only really 5-7 “safe” days at the end.