I’m getting a ton of questions about Natural Family Planning these days. I must have gotten mentioned on a Catholic website or similar somewhere, because I’ve never written about it before now. So here goes…

All forms of birth control, including Natural Family Planning, are extremely effective when done correctly. The weakness in any method, is the users who are hard wired to try and find ways to get pregnant, or get someone pregnant. It’s the “one time” you forget a condom that just happens to line up with her ovulation. It’s her flushing the birth control pills each morning. Even something like a Depo-Provera shot, you would think it’s pretty much foolproof, but it’s always possible to miss an appointment to get the next shot.

Or as Dr Ian Malcolm says, “Life finds a way.”

So while Natural Family Planning done correctly is extremely effective, it is also one of the most wide open methods of birth control to allow life to find a way. Ovulation does skip around a bit. Right when she’s most horny is when you’re not supposed to do it. You don’t have any other form of birth control available on hand to cover the moment of weakness.

I’d also mention that Natural Family Planning is the most perfectly created system of “birth control” to allow a husband to be cuckolded. It purposely keeps the husband’s semen well clear of the vagina during her fertile period, and a lover would be unimpeded in impregnating her. In this sense it is completely unnatural and major display of weakness for a husband to take part in. If she’s ovulating, you’re totally meant to be filling her vagina up with your semen.

That being said, the wives all crazy for Natural Family Planning are typically highly religiously motivated, and one hopes that they are likely to stay faithful if they stay true to form. They are also highly likely to have traditional values and want to get pregnant anyway. So ahhh… wife will find a way.

So anyway, my hunch is that if you’re in a Natural Family Planning relationship, the wife is pretty much running the show as she has total control over the sexuality of the husband. If you’re a husband, you’re having reduced frequency of sex, and having more children than you probably want. So all in all, a woman all excited for Natural Family Planning, is probably fairly questionable as a wife choice for a highly sexed guy.

Which is not to say you should rule out Catholic women as a whole… from Wikipedia…

“Catholics for a Free Choice claimed in 1998 that 96% of U.S. Catholic women had used contraceptives at some point in their lives and that 72% of Catholics believed that one could be a good Catholic without obeying the Church’s teaching on birth control.^[53] According to a nationwide poll of 2,242 U.S. adults surveyed online in September 2005 by Harris Interactive, 90% of Catholics supported the use of birth control/contraceptives.^[54] Use of natural family planning methods among United States Catholics purportedly is low, although the number cannot be known with certainty. In 2002, 24% of the U.S. population identified as Catholic.^[22] But of sexually active Americans avoiding pregnancy, only 1.5% were using NFP.^[23]“

Or put another way, it’s a religion/Catholic thing that most religious/Catholics think is weird/stupid. Not sure how else to spin that. If you’re a husband in a Natural Family Planning marriage, my advice is to simply assume that you’re going to become a father in short order and repeatedly.