The truth about NFP

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Before I was married, I used to believe all of the following things about NFP:
  1. NFP is easy learn and to use.
  2. NFP is great for your marriage and lowers divorce rate.
  3. NFP is a shared responsibility of husband and wife, whereas the burden of artificial birth control falls exclusively on the wife.
  4. Married couples who use NFP never feel used or taken advantage of by their spouse.
  5. Everyone who uses NFP loves it.
Now that I’ve been married for three years and have one child, this is what I believe about NFP:
  1. All of the above is simply a marketing tool for NFP.
  2. The truth is, artificial birth control is a sin and NFP is one of three moral options for Catholic married couples. The other two are complete abstinence and just having sex whenever you want and whatever happens happens.
  3. The responsibility for charting mainly falls on the wife. It’s her body and her cycles that are being charted, and the only thing the husband can do is write on the chart, and after the wife has already done the hard part, she may as well just write it on the chart herself.
  4. NFP is not always easy to learn and use. There are straightforward methods such as Marquette, but with other methods, such as Creighton, it takes time and practice, and the recommended six months before your wedding to start charting isn’t enough.
  5. Spouses who use NFP can still feel used and taken advantage of by their spouse. (Especially when the husband comes in and says “Can we have intercourse tonight?” and then pouts when the answer is no - per #3).
  6. Plenty of people hate NFP.
  7. Long, indefinite periods of abstinence due to postpartum or peri menopause NFP cause great heartache and stress for married couples.
That’s the truth, as far as I have come to experience. Thanks for listening. I am fully prepared to be chewed out. Comments welcome.
 
No chewing out from me. 😃

Sounds pretty accurate. NFP is just one of the three licit options, as you mentioned, so I use it when I need to and enjoy the times when I don’t need to and I am grateful that it has worked for me in the past.

But I never drank the NFP koolaid. I recognized the marketing language.
 
OP, I am glad that you wrote this entry. I found it valuable. Now I’m hoping to read more real life stories.

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Was nfp used to help conceive your one child or were yall trying to avoid conception? Just curious?

Who was it that said Catholicism hasn’t been tried and found lacking, it’s been found difficult and left untried?
 
kptrs said:
Before I was married, I used to believe all of the following things about NFP:
  1. NFP is easy learn and to use.
  2. NFP is great for your marriage and lowers divorce rate.
  3. NFP is a shared responsibility of husband and wife, whereas the burden of artificial birth control falls exclusively on the wife.
  4. Married couples who use NFP never feel used or taken advantage of by their spouse.
  5. Everyone who uses NFP loves it.
Now that I’ve been married for three years and have one child, this is what I believe about NFP:
  1. All of the above is simply a marketing tool for NFP.
  2. The truth is, artificial birth control is a sin and NFP is one of three moral options for Catholic married couples. The other two are complete abstinence and just having sex whenever you want and whatever happens happens.
  3. The responsibility for charting mainly falls on the wife. It’s her body and her cycles that are being charted, and the only thing the husband can do is write on the chart, and after the wife has already done the hard part, she may as well just write it on the chart herself.
  4. NFP is not always easy to learn and use. There are straightforward methods such as Marquette, but with other methods, such as Creighton, it takes time and practice, and the recommended six months before your wedding to start charting isn’t enough.
  5. Spouses who use NFP can still feel used and taken advantage of by their spouse. (Especially when the husband comes in and says “Can we have intercourse tonight?” and then pouts when the answer is no - per #3).
  6. Plenty of people hate NFP.
  7. Long, indefinite periods of abstinence due to postpartum or peri menopause NFP cause great heartache and stress for married couples.
That’s the truth, as far as I have come to experience. Thanks for listening. I am fully prepared to be chewed out. Comments welcome.
Click to expand...
Not going to be chewed out by me. I never used it, but I have heard plenty about it that wasn’t so positive from people who have… I think the matter should be presented truthfully and without hype so a truly informed decision can be made. Some of what is advertised just sounds so unreal (and unprovable). Just the facts, good and bad, but facts.
 
  1. NFP brought me to the Catholic church, I hold it in quite high esteem. The Catholic position on fertility and respect for God’s design in fertility is the reason I was drawn to the church.
  2. I was using NFP before becoming Catholic, plenty of non-religious people use NFP without compliant and CHOOSE to use it over other ABC methods (granted, they usually use condoms or withdrawal during fertile periods instead of abstinence)
  3. Yes, the responsibility is mainly on the wife because the wife has changing fertility where the husband is 100% fertile all the time, so it’s easy for him to keep track of his. It is biology here, not much can be said. I never expected my husband to participate.
  4. I’ve only used Marquette and Billings, beyond a modified calendar/mucus method I devised myself before becoming catholic and learning that there were actual “methods”.
  5. I have never felt taken advantage of by my spouse when he “pouts” if he gets a no, he “pouts” sometimes because I won’t give him oral sex outside of foreplay leading to the marital act (he is not Catholic and doesn’t understand). Granted, we have two small kids, if we even get the chance to be alone we both make the effort so I usually am not turning him down.
  6. I’m postpartum and have not been experiencing any long periods of abstinence, after either of my children.
  7. I did have one unplanned pregnancy, we knew we used a possibly fertile day though, and we were okay with it. It did end in a MC. Other than that, we conceived both of our children on our first cycle of trying, which means we are both plenty fertile and we aren’t just getting “lucky” on the NFP thing. (My sister used secular (condom during fertile times) NFP for years, only to find out she is infertile and was charting for nothing).
  8. I like NFP just fine, but I may have rose colored glasses as I have hardly had any cycles in the past 3.5 years due to two pregnancies and extended breastfeeding…ask me again in a few years as we need to let these children get a little older before we have more, just for my mental health sake if anything.
 
While I don’t think NFP is a joke…I think the way it is “sold” by instructors, flashy websites and the Church in general…is a complete joke.

I can’t stand NFP because I’m totally turned off by the way it’s portrayed.

I know loads of married couples who use it and use it well. We were fine with it until our second was born. Then things went totally haywire with my charting…every single month.

The people who advertise it as this wonderful thing that will bring you closer together as a couple, lower your chance of divorce and make everything sunshine and rainbows are full of it.
They are just being advertisers for a product…that is it.

When my husband and I started learning NFP…the people we met during the marriage encounter and the materials we bought to learn it spent much of the time talking about how incredibly awesome NFP was.

We went through CCL and automatically got a magazine every month that was nothing but a total propaganda machine.

Looking back on it…it makes me want to vomit in my mouth a little.

There was nothing, absolutely nothing about the challenges NFP brings. I don’t think the word challenge is even apart of their vocabulary.

The divorce statistic is ridiculous. Why do people who use NFP divorce less?
Because they are already devote Catholics who believe everything the Church teaches…they aren’t going to get divorced and if they do…it will be at a much, much lower rate then the rest of the contracepting and secular world.
If they were Virgins when they got married…their divorce rate is like 1-2%.

The other thing that bothers me is so many people claim that NFP is so affective. I’ve seen people on this site claim that it’s the most effective form of birth control behind sterilization.

No…it’s not. It has a very, very wide margin of user error. It can fluctuate from 1-2% failure rate to 20% failure rate…depending on how well the couple charts.

Plus…any secular website that tallys up the effectiveness of NFP will also be considering secular folks that use it…and they tend to use another form of ABC…like condoms during the red light days and might even forgo NFP all together and use nothing but ABC during the really hard charting time periods like PP nursing and menopause.

The burden falls on the wife. It’s her body and her cycles. The husband could put the chart together.
But she is taking her own temperature, she is investigating her mucus signs and her cervix.

I knew I was going to be in trouble with NFP from day one of learning for a couple of reasons.

My husband was the problem and he didn’t really know any better.

I had to learn NFP on my own with a home learning course. There are no instructors in my area.
Hubby was singing from the roof tops at the hospital that we would be using NFP.
But he didn’t pick up any of the materials…turned his nose up in disgust whenever I mentioned mucus and started bugging me about sex. “How is the Charting going?” was his code way of asking if we could have sex tonight.

I was so frustrated with the process and with my husband I gave up and just told him to tell me if we were good to go.

He stopped asking after that.

No, NFP is ridiculous.
I’m not saying it doesn’t work.

But the way it’s advertised turns me off to it big time.

I will never say it’s this wonderful thing. It is a big cross for us and a lot of other people who were duped into thinking our marriages would be just peachy because of it.
pensmama87 said:
There’s a really great book by Simcha Fisher called The Sinner’s Guide to NFP. She’s very “real” about the challenges of NFP, plus she’s hilarious.
Click to expand...
Her book is so awesome.

I spent most of it crying because she hit every aspect of how difficult it can be.

It doesn’t teach you how to use NFP…it just gives you a reality check and it doesn’t sugar coat anything.

I read it when I’m ready give up sometimes…that and I complain here.

I’ve never been so close to just giving up. Charting makes me ill just thinking about it. I hate the burden and fear it gives me…but it’s our only option.

And…it’s the only way I can stop this madness.
Having another kid is not an option.
 
kptrs said:
before i was married, i used to believe all of the following things about nfp:
  1. Nfp is easy learn and to use.
  2. Nfp is great for your marriage and lowers divorce rate.
  3. Nfp is a shared responsibility of husband and wife, whereas the burden of artificial birth control falls exclusively on the wife.
  4. Married couples who use nfp never feel used or taken advantage of by their spouse.
  5. Everyone who uses nfp loves it.
Now that i’ve been married for three years and have one child, this is what i believe about nfp:
  1. All of the above is simply a marketing tool for nfp.
  2. The truth is, artificial birth control is a sin and nfp is one of three moral options for catholic married couples. The other two are complete abstinence and just having sex whenever you want and whatever happens happens.
  3. The responsibility for charting mainly falls on the wife. It’s her body and her cycles that are being charted, and the only thing the husband can do is write on the chart, and after the wife has already done the hard part, she may as well just write it on the chart herself.
  4. Nfp is not always easy to learn and use. There are straightforward methods such as marquette, but with other methods, such as creighton, it takes time and practice, and the recommended six months before your wedding to start charting isn’t enough.
  5. Spouses who use nfp can still feel used and taken advantage of by their spouse. (especially when the husband comes in and says “can we have intercourse tonight?” and then pouts when the answer is no - per #3).
  6. Plenty of people hate nfp.
  7. Long, indefinite periods of abstinence due to postpartum or peri menopause nfp cause great heartache and stress for married couples.
That’s the truth, as far as i have come to experience. Thanks for listening. I am fully prepared to be chewed out. Comments welcome.
Click to expand...
👍👍👍👍
 
Yes, NFP is hard. But I started charting because I take forever to get pregnant snd my babies keep dying. So I find it difficult because it’s not working quick enough for me…not because I have too many kids and don’t want anymore.
 
I have yet to talk to anyone about NFP who doesn’t have a similar opinion.
 
The posts on this thread are very honest. I hope that i don’t regret posting about such an intimate subject.

I started charting my cycle long before I was married because … well probably because I have control issues and I wanted to plan - like I didn’t want to go camping if my period might start. Also, my periods were somewhat irregular, and I was curious about what might cause that.

However, when I married, I went to Planned Parenthood and got a prescription for bc. As it turned out the bc pills made me feel sick most of the time so I began to use what, way back then, was called “rhythm.” (I write that “I began using… rhythm” because as everyone knows, it is the woman who has to be responsible in this matter.)

I never had a problem with this method. I do think that all my years of experience charting my cycle before I married gave me a good awareness about when I was fertile. All of my pregnancies were planned and occurred between 1970 and 1979 - I said it was “way back then.”

With the exception of a booklet that my best friend’s mother gave to her when we were 11, I didn’t have any formal “sex education” until I was in college which is where I first learned anything about homosexuality - seriously never heard a word about it until I was in college. But I digress, my point is that when I took that course, I also learned that there doesn’t have to be intercourse for there to be sexual relations. I don’t know what the Church says about this, and honestly I didn’t care at the time because I believe that at some point married adults have to make some decisions on their own about what works for them. I should probably say that I never went for coitus interruptus because I think that particular practice is doomed for failure. Did I mention that I have control issues? This seems to me now like too much information, but maybe someone will find it helpful.
 
My husband and I have had nothing but positive experiences with Creighton method. I didn’t know a blessed thing about NFP until right before I got married and we were really late trying to catch the bus. We didn’t even look into it until after we came back from our honeymoon. Fortunately for us, we live in a community that has a hospital that offers instruction by a real nurse and my husband’s insurance covered it in full. We were asked to abstain for one month (not six) while we learned the method. This was really annoying as we had just been married, but that’s what you get when you don’t read the paperwork correctly and wait until the last minute to do things.

We both felt that the method was really easy to learn and interpret, though for obvious reasons it is NOT always easy to abstain. However, it has been completely accurate for us. We got pregnant on our first cycle, both times we tried and we have not had any surprises. Also, my charting allowed for me to get a diagnosis of my low progesterone that has been causing me health problems. Despite the fact that my cycles are very uneven, I have felt really confident in my ability to determine my fertility on a given day. I did have some issues when my cycle returned post-partum, because I was lactating and I was producing a ton of extra mucus. I went back to the instructor who gave me special instructions for nursing moms and I didn’t have any more issues, though we did have to abstain a few more days per cycle than I had pre-pregnancy.

I am another person who was drawn to the faith because of the teachings on sexuality. Estrogen-based birth control has caused numerous severe health issues among my mother and sisters and since way before I began practicing the faith, I felt put out that women were expected to put poisons in their body in order to stifle their fertility. Two of my sisters, who are both completely secular, use Creighton method health reasons and because it has proven for one of my sisters to be more effective than IUDs and hormonal BC. She has gotten pregnant multiple times while on different forms of ABC, and suffered miscarraiges and a stillbirth because of it. She has not gotten pregnant while using Creighton method and barrier methods, but she says she’d rather deliver a healthy baby that she has to put up for adoption than go through another stillbirth. In short, I’m pretty much sold on NFP, and I do think it has been good for my marriage in many ways, though I agree that most of the responsibility for charting is on me. I don’t really want my husband with me when I’m using the bathroom. (Ew)
 
Learning about NFP drew me into the Church. Not because of the actual practice of NFP, but because I came across the Church’s teachings about marriage and sexuality while I was just hunting for information about how to practice NFP, which I wanted to learn for health reasons. I fell in love with the Church through learning about Her teachings, but instead of practicing NFP, we decided to grow our family. We postponed actually taking a class until after we had entered the Church and I had to learn it while pregnant and navigate the tricky postpartum time having never practiced NFP before. But it worked and we were able to space out the three other babies (including the baby I miscarried) as much as we desired. But it really wasn’t much spacing, actually. 3 babies in five years, and one baby in heaven. Now, I am facing as much as another decade of fertility, and I am at my limit. Perhaps we shouldn’t have had the babies so quickly, and done more NFP to space them out, but I don’t really like abstaining and I love babies. I just physically am not able to do it again. I would likely require multiple cesarians if I kept having babies and I have no community support and I am already struggling mightily with my screeching toddler and my nursling (10months). But God has taken this decision out of my hands for the time being anyway, because my fertility still hasn’t returned, so I still don’t have to chart. But the joke is still on us because between the sleep difficulties our family is having and the stress we are all under, we are abstaining more than we ever did in normal NFP TTA cycles. So for me, I have never seen either the glossy picturesque NFP lifestyle nor the contraceptive mentality that so many Catholics warn about. It just is what it is. One more piece of information that can be taken into account when deciding whether or not the conditions are right to renew the marriage vows. It isn’t anything more profound than that for us.
 
The only thing I have yet to know is how to check the cervix. I have no idea where it is located in me. It all feels the same for me inside. I can take the temp, consistency and color of mucus, and the calendar counting, but that’s about it. Fertility has been easy to track so far. The only scary thing about NFP, at least for me, is charting. Visually, those charts are a headache compared to my husband’s scientific research equations which I cannot read. Thank God for the people behind those apps that makes it all a bliss.
 
pensmama87 said:
There’s a really great book by Simcha Fisher called The Sinner’s Guide to NFP. She’s very “real” about the challenges of NFP, plus she’s hilarious.
Click to expand...
Definitely a good book for those on the outside who want a humorous dose of reality that is still faithful to what the church teaches about NFP.

For my wife and I, NFP never worked. My wife’s cycle is very difficult to detect, and often goes off the rails because of anxiety. We were doing the Creighton method for a while with a doctor and a certified Creighton method teacher. Although we learned a ton of good stuff, it ultimately caused my wife so much stress that we had to abandon the method and just go with straight up abstinence. And to be fair, most doctor visits cause her stress. Her obstetrician is always pushing her to get an IUD and her family doctor always wants her to use contraception. She is always anxious when she goes into a medical facility. Those folks can really make you feel bad about your choices by their attitude, responses, and tone of voice. And because my wife is so sensitive, she carries around those negative feelings for a long time. Not that the Creighton trained doctor made her feel that way. Its just the method turned out to be very stressful for her.

The worst experience we had was after our third. For the first two, we basically had marital relations whenever we felt like it, but that had to stop after the third was conceived. I had a lot of growing to do. I had to learn that my “needs” were not “needs” but “wants”, and that I needed to sacrifice those wants for the sake of my wife. After the third, we had a nasty combination of PPD and learning NFP that was in no way fun.

I think we felt the most in control with this sixth pregnancy. My wife and I abstained for a year and half. It was difficult, but I remember my wife coming to me and saying she felt that she wanted to try for another. We talked about it. We prayed about it. And we both agreed.

I’m fully prepared to abstain again for however long it takes between now and the time when we discern that God wants us to be open again. We have many good reasons for doing so at the moment.

One of the biggest issues is being intimate without having intercourse. Cuddling is very important to us. Any kind of physical touch. There is the danger that the relationship becomes distant at times and intimacy becomes almost non existent. Then, especially for my wife, emotional walls start to come up. You have to watch for those walls. If you are not careful, they can become huge. Dates are really important. Little daily rituals that bring you closer. I always try to bring her coffee in bed in the mornings and we have one on one time together.

Most important is to take things one day at a time. The thing about this Catholic position we have is that we don’t close the door forever to God until he closes the door for us. When people ask us if we are done, we normally say, “We are done for now.” If the folks we are talking to seem hostile or judgmental, we may say the “…for now.” part internally. Its usually because I don’t want to pick a fight.

I also know that just because I have a big family does not make me a virtuous person or guarantee that my family will turn out perfectly. I’ve seen wonderful large families that seem to be perfect. But I’ve also seen large families that look like train wrecks. One heart breaking story of a family of 8 where the oldest dropped the baby, and the baby died. Another where the parents separated after having the 10. I think we need to get away from mystical or magical thinking about large families. It is wonderful, and there are so many blessings, but along with the proliferation of blessings, comes a proliferation of crosses. You simply can’t be a responsible person in a large family and not take up your crosses. There is no place to hide from them. Perhaps that is what makes them a hot bed of vocations and holiness.

As I was writing this, I was looking for a quote from Saint Catherine of Sienna about how she felt that mothers of large families carried the largest crosses of anyone, or something like that. Instead I stumbled on this site with quotes from Pius XII on large families. onepeterfive.com/pope-pius-xii-large-catholic-families/ I’d love to unpack some of these quotes.

God bless you all,
Ut
 
We used the Sympto-Thermal Method for 25 years, to conceive and to avoid conception. My wifes cycles were very regular, so it was fairly easy in the mechanics.

She would take her temp and fill in the chart, and I would do the analysis every month. So, SHE asked ME if it was time. I never told her we needed such and such a temp, so she was never swayed when she read the thermometer.

That said, it was incredibly hard. It’s unnatural for the woman to not be able to have relations when she is fertile and interested and to “force” relations, if that’s right term, when she isn’t. Living for those 10 safe days every month took the spontaneity out of it.

It’s totally different now that we are past fertility.
 
I’d add:
#8 The difficulty of NFP causes some to re-examine their reasons for wanting to avoid pregnancy. When the reasons for wanting to avoid a pregancy no longer seem proprtionate to the difficulty of NFP, some stop using it and others may become less vigilant about charting and/or avoiding during fertile times.

#9 Larger than average families can (but don’t necessarily) result from #8.
 
What I think gets lost in these conversations about NFP is that ABC is no walk in the park. We can sometimes have the grass is always greener mentality, imagining that those who use ABC with no pangs of conscience have it easier. Having been one of those women myself (raised Protestant and instructed that use of ABC was necessary in marriage), I can vouch for the truth that ABC is not easier or simpler or more fun or anything. It is messy and it is dangerous and it seriously messes up the body of the people who use it, but worst of all, it messes with the relationship between husband and wife. That is what caused me to run home to Rome, and convert, along with my husband.

So yes, NFP can be difficult. But from my experience of a decade of using various forms of ABC before I ever even heard of NFP, I can say with certainty that the Catholic Church holds out the gentlest and most compassionate options for those who are called to marriage. 🙂
 
We tried it when we got married. I don’t know which method. I didn’t know there were different methods until I joined CAF.

My wife’s temperature didn’t cooperate, and there didn’t seem to be a pattern that she could decipher. (she is a PhD engineer, so before people question whether or not she was measuring and recording it properly…😉 ) There didn’t seem to be any fertile time.

The doctor ordered a couple tests and came up with the same answer. Her hormone levels weren’t really where they were supposed to be. IT seemed unlikely that she would get pregnant without outside help.

So while we were thinking about our options she got pregnant. I guess the nicer way to say it is, “we conceived our first child.”

Based on this, I think NFP wasn’t a practical means of timing pregnancies.
 
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