My husband’s attitude is similiar. When we were dating, my husband often confused me about his stance on NFP. Sometimes he’d talk in manners where he felt NFP was immoral and that spacing even for health reasons was unnecessary. When I’d talk it through with him, we always seemed to come out with the idea that we had matching ideas and were just miscommunicating. He felt like I was talking about NFP with a high contraceptive mentality, and I’d feel he was talking about being like the Duggars. He’s never seen the Duggar’s reality TV show, so the reference means nothing to him.
Since we’ve been married, I have found that my husband sees the necessity of NFP, but I am more cautious about getting pregnant than he is. Our differences lie in that I feel its wrong to covet after children and will accept what ever number God gives me. I have no desire for a large or small family. My husband wants a large family. I have an anxiety disorder, and he pins some of my reservations on irrational concerns based purely on baseless anxiety. I often feel his lack of experience with large families and children make him idealistic and a poor judge on when we’re ready.
Meanwhile, I don’t struggle with abstaining from sex, and at times my lack of struggle makes him feel undesired and rejected. I don’t think it helps that when we first married, intercourse was impossible. I lost my desire to have sex during that time and honestly had never experienced a desire for intercourse in my life. I just assumed because I had sexual desires, once I let them free in marriage, the desire would show up. But with the painful experiences and failures with consumating our marriage, the prospect of having to have intercourse would turn me off. I went through therapy like a chore and I’ve always struggled to let go of seeing sex as another chore I have to complete to love my husband. I see the go days, and am like “Ok let’s take advantage of these because sex is important.” He hates it when I dismiss the importance of sex in our marriage. And at times when I’ve convinced him we have serious reason to avoid having another child, he’s gone through periods of being angry with the Church about NFP stating that NFP is more of a rejection than contraceptives.
I would say what unites us and heals these divisions is prayer. You have to learn to stop seeing this as a competition between your will and your spouses will. Both of us have found that praying together as a couple helps us to trust each other, and to unite in our wills. Its helped me to listen to my husband’s legitimate concerns and hurts rather than to feel threatened by them and its done the same for him toward me.
Don’t look at it as the marriage debt trumping your concerns. I don’t think any husband wants to have sex with the wife he loves when she sees it as a chore.
