As I read your letter regarding your experience of NFP, I almost wished that I could say this to you in person, because your pain seemed so deep. I will preface this by saying that my husband and I, unlike you and your wife, contracepted in our marriage from our wedding day in 1983 till the year 2000. That is almost equivalent to the length of your use of NFP.

In the year 2000, we had a deep faith conversion in our Catholicism and learned about NFP, throwing our contraceptives away. We even abstained totally for a period of about 6 weeks while we studied. I, too, thought I pretty much had a cycle of the same length every month. Lo and behold, I was wrong. It varied from 23-33 days and the first day of Phase III varied from day 10 to day 21. The Lord seems to balance out the shorter cycles with the longer ones and the joy of anticipation for each other grew over time, to the point of where every time is like the first time, only better than we could ever have imagined.

You are cheating yourselves by refusing temperature taking, because with the sympto-thermal method I think your wife will come to see that Phase III does not have to come necessarily on Day 18, but sometimes much sooner. We too, abstain during Phase I at this point in our lives because we are in our mid-late forties and I still have mucus as early as day three. Yes, my desire for my husband is strongest in Phase II, but we have prayed and pray and continue to wait till Phase III. Sometimes we abstain for two weeks out of the month, sometimes a bit longer. Yes, by Phase III certain areas are tender and so the desire is not as profound as in Phase II. Therein lie our similarities, but there are also great differences. Allow me to explain.

NFP is a two way street and so I feel badly that you and your wife are not on the same wavelength in all aspects. NFP is not just physical; it is also spiritual in that communication and tenderness between husband and wife truly grow as the two become one in body, but even when they abstain, in soul. We prayed before we started practicing and please understand that at first it did feel a little funny to us and a bit uncomfortable praying together becasue that we always did separately. Now we not only had communion with each other but with God. We also decided upon the time we would take my temperature and I had read that one couple had the husband take his wife's and set the alarm. We thought there was a certain beauty in that; her temperature, but his also not only participating, but initiating. That is service; that is love. We tried it and have been doing it ever since. We hug and kiss a lot during the other phases, and not necessarily always passionate, but as a greeting. We take walks and enjoy conversations with each other. We have had our marriage blessed on our wedding anniversary for the last 5 years. We play games and enjoy our two teenagers immensely, and during the first two years of practicing NFP, we really struggled with discerning about pregnancy, but God deemed otherwise. Our whole outlook on life and marriage was transformed even though we though it was good when we started!

This brings me to my closing points. You mentioned the "lies" of NFP and that really struck me because I've thought of the lies without NFP. For example, do we kid ourselves through the mainstream media that married couples make love every day without fail? I don't know about you, but I don't know a single couple that does. My husband and I have had relations more in the past five years than in the previous with contraception. Why? We treasure the days we are together whereas before it was something you could do anytime and took for granted. Now we make sure we don't miss out. There may be certain days we choose to abstain, but the spontaneity on the other days makes up for it. Please don't be offended if I say that it seems like the love in your marriage has been reduced to just sex, but it's obvious that there is animosity between you two and that the sex or lack thereof is the symptom. I hope and pray that your issues are resolved and that eventually you find NFP to be the gift from God that we have found it to be and that that you can come to see each other as the same. You are in my prayers.