Husband still very angry about NFP and surprise pregnancies. Going to counseling

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sdeco

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I have an update on the situation I posted about in this thread:

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=771527

My husband did end up getting a vasectomy last week. But things are still pretty bad. He says I can’t handle the kids we already have, that I let them “run wild,” and that he still thinks giving our unborn baby up for adoption would be the best thing. He told me last night that I’m like a “welfare mother” who keeps getting pregnant. He said using NFP is an extreme form of Catholicism. He compared it to Muslim terrorism.

I agree with him that our kids have some behavior problems, and I’m willing to address that. But the things he is saying are uncalled for, so I said I wanted to go to counseling, for both our marriage and to fix the kids behavior problems so we can better handle the fourth when it comes. He still refuses to go to counseling, and he certainly doesn’t want to go to a Catholic counselor, because following Catholic teaching on NFP is what got us into this situation in the first place. I said I would just go by myself, and he seemed OK with that. I called the Pastoral Solutions Center last night and left my phone number with their answering service. They are going to call me within a week to set up an appointment.

Is there anything I should be doing in the meantime? Any advice? Thanks.
 
The thing is… it’s not the “Catholic teaching on NFP”… it’s the “Catholic teaching of MARRIAGE” and what the SACRAMENT in the faith means.

I think that point needs to be emphasized more than anything… maybe marriage counseling would be helpful? Have you considered Retrouvaille?

Prayers.
 
As I said in my post, I am going to counseling. He won’t go to marriage counseling, so I am going on my own. The Pastoral Solutions Center does counseling when only one spouse is willing to go. I am hoping they can convince him to start going so that he can get his side of the story heard. I have considered Retrouvaille but he won’t go to that either. To be honest I think our problems are too serious for Retrouvaille.
 
I am so sorry, sdeco, for the trials you are going through. I will pray for you. Thank you for the update. I hope your husband heals from his surgery quickly. Please do go to counseling on your own, even though he refuses to accompany you.

I don’t really have any good advice to offer, because I am raising children of the same age as you, if I remember correctly, and I often feel like I can’t handle the kids I’ve been blessed with. It is incredibly hard work being a mother, as I am sure you know. Kids will act up. My kids are especially pig-headed personalities, too, as you can probably gather from my recent threads in the parenting forum. But just know you are not alone in having wild children. There are so many of us mothers in exactly that stage of family life right now. It will get better someday, as we help our kids to mature and develop their character. Don’t despair.

With regards to what your husband has been saying to you…well, you know, I think, that he is wrong for saying such mean things. And he is not legally able to give the baby up for adoption against your will. You have months before the baby is born to prepare the home and the family, so just take it one day at a time and try to address one challenge/project at a time. Please talk to your priest and counselour about the treatment your husband has been giving you. Emotional abuse during pregnancy is dangerous to the vulnerable mother and her baby. In fact, in abusive relationships, the abuse often ramps up when the woman is pregnant. So please do seek the help you need.

God bless you, sdeco! I will keep you in my prayers, dear sister in Christ. May the Lord comfort you tenderly in the midst of your trials. :gopray2:
 
Thank you so much, mommamarree. I really appreciate your prayers.
 
I was just thinking of your original post this morning while I was getting myself ready for work, and I had wondered to myself how it worked out. I have been and continue to pray for you. When I read the things your husband is saying, it makes my heart ache. I mean, I physically feel an ache for you. I don’t know what advice to give, even! We can only go so far as to love our spouse and pray for our spouse, and it is expected it will be returned! And to be in a situation where the return is not felt, I don’t know what I would do with it. The things he is saying sound incredibly hurtful. I know that I personally would be deeply wounded by them.

I’m sorry for a useless post in so much as I don’t have much to offer you except for my heartfelt prayers.

Being a mom is hard. Being a wife is, I think, also incredibly hard. It’s all a lot of work. We all need someone in our corner being our own little cheerleader. I’m really, really, really cheering and rooting for you. Please, love this child you are carrying with all of your heart. Your husband will hopefully see that love and give of it himself.
 
Please know how sorry I am about your situation, I have no advice to offer but I will pray and I do care. Please try the very best you can to pray and wait on God’s solution.
Memorare

Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thine intercession was left unaided.
Inspired by this confidence, I fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins, my mother; to thee do I come, before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in thy mercy hear and answer me.

Amen.
 
I’ll pray too, for both of you and for your sweet babies including the one you are carrying now. Pray for your husband that he can calm down and listen to God and not let his frustrations rule. :gopray:
 
Thank you for having the courage to share such an intimate problem. I hope you find good advice here.

Your husband strikes me as feeling overwhelmed and feeling like he’s not having sufficient control in your marriage. Kids are a lot of work, period, and it takes a couple to raise them. Things are especially difficult if the children have behavioral issues, and if you are truly concerned about your kids’ behavior, see a counselor to help them. Even if you weren’t pregnant again he should be willing to support that decision and participate in whatever means is needed for his children’s health.

Let’s start with your marriage and how the stressors are pulling at you two. Are there other concerns as well that need to be addressed? Is he under work stress or financial strain? Are there conflicts with other family members on either side? Is the only source of conflict the kids and the decision by both of you to rely upon NFP rather than artificial birth control? And, to be fair, NFP is a couples’ decision, not just yours. He’s truly against it and taking action by sterilizing himself - he could honestly have kept his hands to himself otherwise if he didn’t want more kids. But that’s that past now.

Since he has sterilized himself, it’s sort of moot now from the standpoint of having more kids, but for your health I wonder if you should see a reproductive health specialist for your long cycles. While NFP doesn’t work for everyone (we’ve been very fortunate in my wife’s very predictable cycles), long cycles and sudden hormonal shifts can mask more serious underlying issues.

Yes, you should go to counseling, at least start that. You may have to be the more mature one here who brings him back into line, and he is very much out of line right now. A couple needs to work together and give freely of themselves, otherwise the marriage falls out of balance with one person feeling left out and the other feeling inundated. I really hope he decides to join you but you know him well enough to know what’s likely to get him there.

One last thought. It deeply troubles me that he’s against your keeping the baby. If there are truly exigent circumstances - you’re in bad health, your husband is out of work, something where a fourth child is catastrophic to the well-being of the other five of you - then adoption should be considered. But if it just means more work and more sleepless nights, I question his commitment to the family, and would suggest that he get serious about being a husband and a father. You deserve that much. At the most basic level, he slept with you knowing that you could become pregnant - that’s a risk we all take with NFP, and we are open to that risk out of obedience to and love of the Lord. He needs to be fully committed to you and the children you bring into this world, even when inconvenient. Even if he considers Catholics akin to terrorists, he still needs to live up to his promise to you and your children to care for them, raise them, and make sacrifices for the family. We can’t be selfish when we’re parents. We can’t say “I’m not going to accept a child unless it’s born on my terms” unless we’re willing to abstain. Yeah, NFP means tonight might not be safe, tomorrow might not be. Yes, it meant that my wife and I abstain for months at a time if we aren’t certain and we’re not ready for more kids - but it was also difficult for us to abstain for the year after our first child was born because she had lost interest (as, I hear, is common with new moms). That’s one difference between a hormonally-achieved 15-year-old and a self-sacrificing 35-year-old.
 
Since he has sterilized himself, it’s sort of moot now from the standpoint of having more kids, but for your health I wonder if you should see a reproductive health specialist for your long cycles. While NFP doesn’t work for everyone (we’ve been very fortunate in my wife’s very predictable cycles), long cycles and sudden hormonal shifts can mask more serious underlying issues.
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I have been going to an NFP-only doctor for many years. They diagnosed me with PCOS. But I have not been able to regulate my cycles. I took metformin, the medication for PCOS, for four years, and was up to the highest possible dose at one point. I went from 40-80 day cycles to 40-60 day cycles. That was it.
 
According to the Catechism, anything preventing the course of nature is what considered wrong in the eyes of the Church. I really hope he learns to be able to realize that “God’s ways are not our ways and our ways are not God’s ways.” He should go to counseling or at the very least have anyone in the parish to talk to him. He can’t keep it inside because it’ll just fester and get worse. When someone said that there’s the sin of presumption in believing God will forgive me and it don’t matter, is true indeed. This is taking advantage of God’s great love and mercy and no one likes to be taken for granted… Schedule an appointment with a priest and tell him everything! Be very honest, open and sincere. Don’t ever despair or worry what the priest might say… They’ve heard it all so don’t worry about it being ‘too intense’. He may be able to help you with your problems or at least who to recommend to be able to address the many problems you have with kids, husband etc.
 
sdeco said:
I have an update on the situation I posted about in this thread:

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=771527

My husband did end up getting a vasectomy last week. But things are still pretty bad. He says I can’t handle the kids we already have, that I let them “run wild,” and that he still thinks giving our unborn baby up for adoption would be the best thing. He told me last night that I’m like a “welfare mother” who keeps getting pregnant. He said using NFP is an extreme form of Catholicism. He compared it to Muslim terrorism.

I agree with him that our kids have some behavior problems, and I’m willing to address that. But the things he is saying are uncalled for, so I said I wanted to go to counseling, for both our marriage and to fix the kids behavior problems so we can better handle the fourth when it comes. He still refuses to go to counseling, and he certainly doesn’t want to go to a Catholic counselor, because following Catholic teaching on NFP is what got us into this situation in the first place. I said I would just go by myself, and he seemed OK with that. I called the Pastoral Solutions Center last night and left my phone number with their answering service. They are going to call me within a week to set up an appointment.

Is there anything I should be doing in the meantime? Any advice? Thanks.
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Just so you’re aware, Pastorial Solutions does not take insurance. You can attempt to submit it to your insurance for a reimbursement, but the way insurance works pretty much guarentees you will not be reimbursed for the entire cost. Insurance may also simply refuse to cover it because they tend to create assembly lines of generic service to save themselves money.
 
I hope you’re also aware that you can indeed take the pill and other hormones to address PCOS provided that the infertility was merely an unintended or undesired side effect. I don’t know how well the pill works in permanently fixing PCOS but I do know that it’s usually the first form of therapy.
 
Thank you for letting us know how this turned out.

There is something I would like to point out. The Catholic Church teaches that murder is a terrible sin, but it also teaches that you can kill in self-defense.

Back in the 1950’s, it was a mortal sin to commit suicide. People who committed suicide were denied a Catholic funeral. Suicide is still considered a mortal sin, but today the Church feels that people who attempt suicide are not in their right minds and may not be guilty. They are now given Catholic funerals.

Why is there no similar loophole for people that get sterilized out of total desperation? I think you could find a priest to talk to outside of your parish, since you might feel funny explaining what he did to the parish priest. This is really no one’s business, and I hope your husband finds mercy and forgiveness.

Maybe things will improve after your husband recovers from his surgery. He will probably change his mind about the new child after he sees it, and I sincerely hope that things will improve for you in the future.

Another thought is that after you get some counseling, you might want to take the money you’re spending on counseling and use it for hired help (like a maid service). I hope that things go better for you in the future.
 
There is no change in what the Church teaches about suicide, only the way in which She conducts herself following such an action. She has decided not to presume what only God knows and that is whether or not a suicide is a mortal sin or not.

It’s always grave matter. Whether it’s a mortal sin is only something the person and God know. If the person is not in his or her right mind, then it’s not a mortal sin. If he or she is simply despairing without a mental impairment, it might be.

The same goes for sterilization. Or any other grave sin. You need full knowledge and full consent of the will. I’m sure plenty of people have gotten sterilized and it was not a mortal sin. But it’s always grave matter.
 
Commit to say the rosary/mystery once a week then eventually, you will do this every day. Prayer is so simple but so powerful, Mother Mary has been so wonderful for our family. My husband converted and my daughter is passionate about Jesus story. I did a one week fasting. It isn’t an instant healing but you will see progress through your effort and faith.

Blessings and love!
 
mountee said:
…Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thine intercession was left unaided.
Inspired by this confidence, I fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins, my mother; to thee do I come, before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in thy mercy hear and answer me.

Amen.
Click to expand...
Amen :signofcross:

OP-Praying for you! I almost feel a righteous anger for you in this situation. Your dh *clearly *doesn’t know the facts of life on how babies are made if he’s blaming NFP.

I could say more, but it probably wouldn’t be very helpful. I’ll just say another prayer.
 
Perhaps he’s feeling inadequate as a husband and father, and along with that, feeling like he doesn’t have any control over his life (thus, the decision to “take control” of his fertility by getting the vasectomy). It can be a scary feeling to have no idea how to handle what God’s given to us, and men are expected (and generally expect themselves) to “man up” and not express any doubt or fear–they usually need to appear confident even when they aren’t, and look like they know what to do (or can figure it out) even when they have no idea. Expressing fear or insecurity can be seen (even by himself) as weakness.

Sometimes those fears and insecurities show up as anger and blaming others. 😦

I think you are doing what you can to deal with the situation, and I think getting counseling is a great idea. I will pray for you!

I would also recommend gently encouraging him, showing trust and respect in him, and expressing your faith in him as husband, leader, and provider. Sometimes, it’s not about saying/doing what we wives think would be the most loving thing, but rather, saying/doing the most respectful thing. The most respectful thing doesn’t always feel loving, to me at least, but it* is,* because it’s what my husband most needs at the time. This isn’t easy and doesn’t come naturally to many women (including me), but the book Love & Respect will probably help a lot.

The reason that I suggest this is that from what you’ve posted, your husband sounds a lot like mine did a few months ago–lots of blaming, criticism of my abilities as a wife and mother and criticism of the kids, attacking the faith (and my faith) and NFP, and falling farther and farther from the Church. There are so many ways I didn’t even realize that I was undermining my husband’s confidence and showing disrespect, and many times, his lack of confidence came across as anger, criticism, and blaming me for the ways he felt like he was failing or inadequate. We’re not completely back on track–he still hasn’t come to Mass with me in years–but we’re getting there, slowly. Lots of prayer, humility, submission to God through my husband, and showing him more respect (and less disrespect–even unintentionally): these are the things that have helped and are helping my situation, and I hope they will help you, too.

God bless. :gopray2:
 
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