A Husband's Guide To Natural Family Planning
First off, this is not meant to be a post defending natural family planning (NFP), or a post examining the history of contraception and the Church’s stance. The point will simply be explaining NFP to men, how it benefits your marriage, and the role that husbands should embrace in NFP.
What is Natural Family Planning?
NFP is an umbrella term for different “scientific, natural, and moral methods of family planning that can help married couples either achieve or postpone pregnancy.” (USCCB) NFP is using Fertility Awareness methods when a married couple has decided they either want to have a baby or discerned it best to not have a baby in their current circumstances.
This is not the rhythm-method/calendar-method from the 1930’s that tracked a woman’s cycle by counting days and reduces ovulation to a guessing game. Instead, NFP helps a woman know her body to the point that she can see the signs of fertility and then the couple determining whether they should have sex knowing that conception is possible, or abstain from sex until ovulation has passed to avoid pregnancy.
In most methods of NFP, your wife will keep track of her signs of fertility and record that data on a chart. Some couples still do the paper chart and others keep it on different apps. Regardless of how it is tracked, men play an integral role in how NFP is implemented in their relationship and it’s success.
Four Ways to be Involved in NFP that Will Help Your Marriage
1) Communication
It will force you to keep the lines of communication open. Because discussing hopes, dream, babies, and finances can be kind of a mood killer, you’re going to want to have those talks way before you start a romantic evening. It’s probably not a good idea to go all the way up to the line and then start talking about tackling debt and the possibility of home schooling the kids.
The big conversations shouldn’t be put on the back burner, and NFP should get you in the habit of bringing up the big conversations regularly. Before you and your wife unite physically and spiritually, you should know you are also on the united in other aspects of your life as well. It challenges you both to be vulnerable, authentic, and honest about life circumstances ranging from health and finances to career goals and other stressors.
2) Responsibility
It’s not your wife’s job to tell you when sex is an option or not. Most of the times when couples start practicing NFP, tracking and interpreting the chart becomes the wife’s responsibility. Many husbands who practice NFP will joke about “green sticker” (dry) days as days that they get the green light after asking what the chart says.
Some NFP teachers try to remedy this by telling couples to chart together. The idea is that the wife is supposed to communicate at the end of the day to the husband what, if any, signs of fertility she observed. Then it’s the husbands job to fill in the chart. That way the husband doesn’t have to ask, because he should already know.
That doesn’t work for us.
But that doesn’t mean that we get to the end of the day and I look to Monica for a thumbs up or a thumbs down. What we found works for us is to ask Monica about fertility signs a few times though the day. She replies and I have to know what they mean well enough to interpret them to myself.
That way, I know - if we’re already agreed that we are trying to avoid conceiving - that it’s a no-go for the day. I also don’t ask her while we’re on a date, or being romantic at home. Relaying fertility signs have become as common as answering “how was your day?” That way, I know and she knows I know. There is no pressure on her.
NFP can put so much pressure on your bride to be the one to either accept or reject your advances. But it doesn’t have to be. As the husband, take the burden of your wife and partner in the tracking in way that works for both of you. That way it is always a mutual decision to engage or abstain based on your shared fertility. Don’t be passive.
3) Chastity
You will not combust if you don’t have sex. Yes, sex is good and a great perk to being married, but it can quickly become an idol if you don’t keep yourself in check.
There will be times, when using NFP, that you would have to abstain from having sex if you’re trying to avoid conceiving a baby.
And that’s a good thing.
Sex needs to be fully appreciated and the times of abstinence can help you work on the other areas of your marriage that sex allows you to gloss over. The chemical, hormonal, and emotional response to sex is real. Often, sex can mask things and make problems seem nonexistent.
One issue that comes up for men is that they often desire sex when they are stressed, had a long day, or aren’t feeling that great about themselves. Especially if they grew up addicted to pornography. If the pornography addiction hasn’t been completely taken care of, or if the addiction to lust is still present, it is very easy to transfer one form of lust to another.
If you find yourself frustrated, angry, annoyed, during periods of abstinence, that is a sign that there is something there you need to pray through with your spiritual director. You also need to ask yourself the question, “do you want sex or do you want your bride?”.
The sexual drive can come up as a response to other things in your life; your wife isn’t supposed to be a release for you. She is the person in your life that requires your love most. If you can’t differentiate between lust and love when being with your wife, you should be abstaining anyway until you figure that out.
In this way, NFP can be a great tool.
4) Intimacy
To a lot of husbands, intimacy means sex.
And they would be right to a point. Sex is very intimate. We could even argue that it is the most intimate thing you do with your spouse.
However, intimacy encompasses more than just sex. Especially when we see sex as just physical. In sex there is a one flesh union between the bodies of the spouses, but the union is not only physical. Sex, or the marital embrace, encompasses all that you are, your entire humanity - body and soul - in the intimate embrace with your spouse.
That means, in sex, there is also a psychological, emotional, and spiritual union occurring along with the physical. But if husbands see sex only as the physical union, it will lack completely in any form of true intimacy. No wonder couples that are suffering from hardships in their relationships typically stop having sex.
NFP can be a safeguard that helps you exercise the intimacy muscles. In the times of the cycle when you are abstaining because you are avoiding, husbands should find ways to grow in intimacy with their spouse in non-sexual ways. And in times that you are not avoiding, they should make it clear that they are being intimate for more reasons that simply sex.
Turn up the romance for the sake of the romance. Take your wife on dates, compliment her, do the dishes, buy her gifts, flirt, dote on her, rub her back, light candles and pour wine. You do all the romantic things not because you hope that it leads to sex, but because you love her. The end of sex is not your own physical gratification, it is the union with your beloved (and children if God blesses you).
Take this time to remind yourselves how to be intimate apart from sex.
This time is also an opportunity to be intimate emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually. Talk to each other about life: Are you happy with the direction things are going? What are you hoping for the future? Are you both still on the same page? Be honest about your mental health and the stresses life has been throwing your way. And if you don’t already, start praying together.
Sex is intimate, but intimacy is more than sex.
Find Out More
If you want to know more about NFP, want to introduce it to your spouse/finance, or want to learn more about the biology of it visit here:
I pray this guide for husband’s is a blessing and can help the faithful rediscover how great NFP can be for marriages and families.
Verso L’alto - Renzo