How do men participate in NFP?

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Em_in_FL said:
Honestly - for us the magic is kept alive by having good humor over the whole thing. Sure we talk about my mucous and my cervix… I look at him all lusty-like and ask if he wants to check my cervix… he plays it up with a big drama of “OH LORD I don’t want to be hearing about that nonsense!”, all dramatic like… really keeps things very light and humorous, while still keeping the communication open - works well for us. 👍

That would be hard - I’m sorry you carry that additional burden.
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That sounds like a good way of dealing with it. 🙂

And thank you. It really is a challenge sometimes, but God is showering me with graces and I manage to just get on with things.
 
Not to hijack the thread, but how would you like a husband to support you if you were having difficulties with NFP? I mean honestly, our options as males are limited on this front. We are always fertile. NFP is all about the woman’s cycle.

I have heard some responses that indicate:

1-Don’t want help at all. This is my body. I will inform you if and when I am fertile. (The man is pretty helpless in this scenario.)
2-Share high level details that don’t involve specific. (again the man is in the passive role here).
3-Be aware of all the specifics and even take over the charting effort. (man as record keeper and possibly even interpreter of charting results - Wow… I’m impressed that this happens.)

My particular case is that my wife is very discourages with NFP. I don’t know how to encourage her or help her. Stress was a big issue with her. I found that Creighton really added to that stress.

Needless to say, I am very interested in this thread because I am trying to understand how I can be of more help to my wife as a husband.

God bless,
Ut
 
utunumsint said:
Not to hijack the thread, but how would you like a husband to support you if you were having difficulties with NFP?
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I suggest that you learn about several methods and explain them to her. See which one makes her feel more keen to do it. I think that just by being positive and encouraging is a lot. You know; “we can do this, it will be to great benefit to us, have faith in God because we are doing His will” kind of thing.
 
utunumsint said:
3-Be aware of all the specifics and even take over the charting effort. (man as record keeper and possibly even interpreter of charting results - Wow… I’m impressed that this happens.)
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I guess we are closest to this.

Although he never charts, he knows how to read them, knows what I mean when I say “dry days,” and could chart if I wanted him to.

The best support is not acting like I am a gate keeper. Or getting upset when I am unsure.

I am in a time of my life where my body is trying to ovulate. Kind of a "I think I can, I think I can … no, sorry, I can’t. :rolleyes: So, I get days of mucus, then no ovulation. Then dry days, then days of mucus with no ovulation. Then a “period.”

Sometimes he jokes and calls me the “little engine that could.” 😛
 
utunumsint said:
Not to hijack the thread, but how would you like a husband to support you if you were having difficulties with NFP?

Needless to say, I am very interested in this thread because I am trying to understand how I can be of more help to my wife as a husband.

God bless,
Ut
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Honestly? Just don’t whine and nag for sex when your wife says it’s not a good time. Don’t sulk and mope around the house because you haven’t had sex for ten days. Don’t stop being helpful and kind to your wife because you can’t have sex when you wish. THAT is how husbands can be helpful and supportive 🙂
 
I do all of my own charting, and it works perfectly fine for us. If my husband did, it would be too time consuming- adding a step. It’s just easier to do it myself. I don’t see it as something we must do together to feel closer or anything.

As far as what to tell your husband- it doesn’t really seem like he’s responding to the “it brings us closer” stuff. I mean yes, in a sense it does…but let’s be honest, a lot of the time it’s hard and frustrating. I think sticking with the practical reasons, in your case, is better. Like, how it is good that you know when you’re fertile, rather than not knowing and trusting a barrier that could break or leak or whatever.
 
JackieMom said:
Honestly? Just don’t whine and nag for sex when your wife says it’s not a good time. Don’t sulk and mope around the house because you haven’t had sex for ten days. Don’t stop being helpful and kind to your wife because you can’t have sex when you wish. THAT is how husbands can be helpful and supportive 🙂
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Hahahaha! 👍 Great post. 😃

Although for me, ten days intervals would be heaven! Right now I am looking at more than a year at least.

But the message still applies. Chin up. Keep a positive attitude, and don’t whine.

God bless,
Ut
 
utunumsint said:
Hahahaha! 👍 Great post. 😃

Although for me, ten days intervals would be heaven! Right now I am looking at more than a year at least.

But the message still applies. Chin up. Keep a positive attitude, and don’t whine.

God bless,
Ut
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And remember it isn’t HER fault. She can’t control her body. NFP is observation, not intervention.
 
In the vows of marriage, the husband agrees with the fact of giving all his manhood (body and soul) to his wife and agrees the fact of receiving the womanhood of his wife (body and soul).
In my opinion,* the understanding of the female cycle of wife by the husband seems to be an obligation for him and a right for him and the wife has* to allow to her husband to understand her own cycle (an obligation for her and a right for herself).**

The N.F.P. should be bilateral, in my opinion, if it is possible. The cooperation and the collaboration about the NFP between spouses seem very important, very natural and very catholic. It is an act of conjugal charity.
 
JackieMom said:
Mine doesn’t, and won’t be in the future. I have zero interest in having him participate in the collection or recording of the data. It’s my body, and I prefer to handle it. I tell him if it’s a “no” or a “go” and he listens.
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I am not totally on the same line than you: your body is his body and his body is your body. He has rights on you, he has obligations on you, he has duties on you. The same for the wife.

The vows of marriage???
 
maryjk said:
And remember it isn’t HER fault. She can’t control her body. NFP is observation, not intervention.
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Exactly. There was a point in time when my husband, I think, subconciously felt I was “punishing” him with crazy postpartum cycles… That somehow I was benefitting from long periods without sex, since at the time I happened to be the less-interested partner. This is especially common when the wife is the one that insists on NFP and the husband would just as soon use contraception.
 
Mine handled the thermometer. I lazed in bed and he produced it, read it, and shook it down. If needed he woke me up. I applied the thermometer to my body myself.

No other participation by spouse. I think it depends on your spouse and his personality what participation he would prefer.
 
I don’t want anyone to take this the wrong way, because I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with man being involved with NFP. But, you are asking your husband to bond with you over your monthly cycle. As a nonbeliever myself I can tell you that you are extremely lucky that he’s on board with NFP and the abstinence involved. He must really love you to make such a sacrifice. You do it for god, but your husband does it for you.

However, I think asking him to bond over it is a bit much. I’m not even sure how he could go about doing that, and I really don’t see how it would make him feel closer to you to try.

Your husband is who he is. You can’t expect him to be a devout catholic husband to you when that’s not the person he is to start with.
 
I’m much better at organization than my wife, so it’s my responsibility to pay attention to the temperature stuff. I grab the thermometer, she hands it back, I record the data. As for the observations, she takes care of that and just tells me what the deal is.

Honestly, I see nothing “bonding” about it. It’s certainly informative. I know way more about the female reproductive system than I ever truly wanted to know, but honestly it’s been good since I’m able to take more of a physician or nursing style approach to all that stuff. Maybe it will serve me well for a time where I’d have to take care of an ailing relative (to not be “grossed out” by anything).

But it’s not a bonding experience; it doesn’t turn me off either. It’s more scientific than anything. The data and the collection of it is one thing and executing on that data is a totally different matter to me.

Then again, I’m a man and so it’s pretty hard to find a context in which I’m actually turned off or repulsed by the idea of sex. 🤷
 
I get married in three days 😃 and I’ve been recording all of my fiance’s signs for the past six months. We plan on the using the sympto thermal method and so she just texts me her temp and other signs in the morning. I record them on our online chart. I have actually enjoyed it because I am able to better study her and know where she is in her cycle. Helps me to better judge what type of mood she will be in so I can love her accordingly. Its such a small task and I would hate to have to ask her every time I wanted to be intimate with her, but that’s just me.
 
My wife takes temps and charts. I interpret the charts. So, it’s me who says yes or no.

Observations are facts. I don’t tell her we need a temp of such and such or whatever. She just records the facts.

Women’s bodies are amazing. From NFP, which has worked really well for us to conceive and to avoid, to watching contractions get closer and closer during labor, it’s all pretty cool. God knew what He was doing!
 
I’m the husband.

We have a hanging file holder on the bathroom wall next to the toilet, behind the door. It has a notebook, her Creighton chart, stickers and the picture dictionary. She observes throughout the day and writes everything in the notebook. When I get home from work (2am) I look at what she wrote and put the correct sticker and mucus symbol in the chart.

She likes that she doesn’t have to deal with it at the end of the day. She can just go to bed.

I like to be involved. Actually, I probably know the method better than she does, except for the actual observations (she does show me the disappointing ones on my off days just for a second opinion:(). I am very curious about learning new things and very passionate about NFP and Catholic sexuality in general. I never have to ask whether it is a good day or not…although, with my work schedule and just learning NFP, there have been no good days in almost 2 months…and it seems as though God is still trying to teach us something, because everytime I have a night off, she has fertile signs…lol. (not really lol.)

BUT, she is not the one telling me no. WAIT. Let me correct that…sex is not about me, so the correct statement would be that she is not telling *us *no. We are truly in it together and we are very open about the entire process. We both know what the status is at all times.

In all honesty, I really think the level of involvement of a husband is directly related to how strongly the husband supports the use of NFP. In our case, I know that it saved our marriage…and I know that our intimate life has been 50-11x better since we started using it, so I am going to do everything I possibly can to help out.

Contra Mundum—you can learn Creighton over distance if you want. Our instructor is a couple hours away and we have all of our training and followups via skype.
 
I’m glad that several men have also replied. Thank you for your (name removed by moderator)ut. I don’t think that my husband will participate in NFP like that, and that is fine with me, I can live with it. But it is hard to feel like ‘the gatekeeper’ all the time, because the focus is not on us, but on depriving him of sex. I agree with the following comment:
28562 said:
In all honesty, I really think the level of involvement of a husband is directly related to how strongly the husband supports the use of NFP.

Contra Mundum—you can learn Creighton over distance if you want. Our instructor is a couple hours away and we have all of our training and followups via skype.
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Do you know how I could find an instructor who would be willing to teach me over Skype? Is there some kind of a Creighton teaching group or something like that that I can contact?
 
Contra_Mundum said:
I’m glad that several men have also replied. Thank you for your (name removed by moderator)ut. I don’t think that my husband will participate in NFP like that, and that is fine with me, I can live with it. But it is hard to feel like ‘the gatekeeper’ all the time, because the focus is not on us, but on depriving him of sex. I agree with the following comment:

Do you know how I could find an instructor who would be willing to teach me over Skype? Is there some kind of a Creighton teaching group or something like that that I can contact?
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Have you asked at your church? Or called your diocese to see if they have contacts they can give you? That is how I found our instructor.
 
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