It seems to me that the man's wife is very hostile toward him. One example is her refusal to take her temperatures.  You don't have to get up early in the morning to take the temperature — your waking temperature is your waking temperature, even if you wake up at noon. I can't help wondering what the wife does. If she has children or a job or does housework (or takes a shower, or uses the bathroom), she has to get up at some point!

Another sign of anger is the wife's refusal to have sex with the husband most of the time. One of the challenges of using  NFP to avoid pregnancy is the feeling that one is obligated to have sex at the infertile time, because otherwise it will never get done. However, this woman's attitude seems extreme. If, as he says, he is making an effort to "romance" her, and she is rejecting his efforts, then the problem is not NFP; it is something else in the relationship.

An unmatched sex drive is something that has been a problem in my marriage, and I have had to learn to deal with it. It's important for me to remind myself of all the things I love about my husband, and to encourage myself to feel positively about him, so that I will be more agreeable about sex. A woman can sometimes feel that her husband is just using her to satisfy a physical need, and that he doesn't care about her personally.

That's probably not true, however, in most marriages.  I have been helped by something I read in Dr. Laura Schlessinger's book, The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands.  (I do not wholeheartedly recommend this book, as its ideal of marriage is very shallow compared to Pope John Paul II's. However, the behavioral concept, "You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar," is quite valid.) Dr. Laura suggested that instead of telling yourself, "My husband needs to have sex," which emphasizes his physical urge, you can tell yourself, "My husband needs to feel close to me," which emphasizes the marital union of two unique persons who love each other. Just this small mental adjustment has made me much more generous in our sexual relationship.

There's some important information missing from this letter. I have the impression that this couple has been avoiding conception for the entire 18 years of their marriage! For comparison, my husband and I have been married 16 years, and we have seven children. It's possible that the couple has some very serious illness or handicap, physical or mental, which precludes their having children. In that case, it seems probable that this chronic malady, not NFP,  is the original catalyst for their marital problems.

In the absence of an absolutely disastrous medical issue, why in the world is the couple abstaining all the time?  If the husband is insisting on childlessness, for all these years, without a very strong reason, that's probably a main reason why his wife is angry and resentful towards him. In that situation, he is using her, to be crude, as a convenience, to "do his business." I think the fact that he says his wife wouldn't take her temperatures after two years suggests this anti-children scenario. Naturally, by that point, she would be dissatisfied with an unfruitful marriage, and begin to resist using NFP wrongly. The practice of NFP can be very difficult if the couple is not united in their intention to welcome or to postpone pregnancy. It's possible for a spouse to grow in spirituality and self-sacrifice while surrendering his or her own desires to the other spouse's, but it does not seem this is happening for the couple in the letter.

My married life has not been picture-perfect, and I sympathize deeply with this couple's unhappiness. However, it seems to me that the husband is using his outrage about NFP as an excuse to avoid addressing the real causes of their marital discord. He's saying, "Birth control pills or sterilization would make everything all right." The error of this reasoning is obvious. Even if he honestly believes that all his marriage needs is more frequent sex, artificial birth control is unlikely to produce that outcome; if he has that kind of attitude, his wife is still not going to want sex with him.

In conclusion, I hope these poor people find help for their real problems, and that the discussion in Family Foundations will be beneficial to many other readers.