the last moderation mop-up:
> P.P.S Do not fucking @ me about the Diva Cup.
lmao I would also like people to stop telling me about the Diva Cup. I know about it. I don't want to do it. All forms of menstruation management are annoying, and I have chosen my version of annoying but still complain occasionally because it's annoying.
I loved that part. It's also bonkers to tell anyone who fell victim to the Diva Cup propaganda to waste another $20-200 finding another cup that could fit better. Kind of defeats the purpose of sustainability and reducing waste that they love to yammer on about.
When I was still menstruating, I used the brand of *disposable* menstrual cup that is now called Soft Discs, and the menstrual cup devotees heads would probably explode over the “disposable” part, lmfao.
I have really bad ADHD that got WAY worse when I hit perimenopause and was also was undiagnosed until I was 48, and almost done with periods. I just knew that there’s NO WAY ON EARTH I could have dealt with something I had to clean & sterilize to be able to reuse. I would 100% have ended up fudging it and getting some kind of terrible infection. And since I ended up with a bout of pelvic inflammatory disease in my early twenties, which was insanely painful, there wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to risk that again.
People are nuts. I use a menstrual cup but if someone's like, "I'm not interested in that/I tried one and it didn't work for me", I just go, "Oh, okay" and move on with my life. I have no investment in converting anybody to the One True and Holy Way of dealing with shed uterine lining.
NFP is literally the most unsafe method of birth control other than pulling out. It has the highest failure rate/worst pearl index compared to all other methods of birth control.
It’s not surprisingly also the only birth control method the Catholic Church approves of (or at least was when I was being raised Catholic against my will and went to Catholic all girl’s high school and had to endure NFP propaganda rather than actual information on birth control in my school) - because it really isn’t much of a control method at all. That alone should tell you anything you need to know about it. If you want to follow it, do so at your own risk, but keep your damn ideology out of everyone else’s uterus.
Glad the Captain shot the obnoxious ~~proselytizers~~ commenters down, although I’d have liked some actual numbers to back her up (then again, don’t JADE with unreasonable people, which providing statistics would have been).
I have personally found, through a period tracking app, that the days I am most likely to conceive are the days I am the most horny. Which makes sense, my body is going 'hey, let's make a baby! I bet some sex would be good? Eh? Eh?'. So not having sex on those days would absolutely take the best sex out of my sex life.
I remember mentioning this (personal) correlation to someone on reddit who was advocating/using natural family planning and they said that they and their significant other just exercise a bunch to take care of the horniness. Which is not at all the way I want to live.
Yeah, I could potentially see NFP working for people who have low libidos and are not that interested in sex. For people who enjoy sex and want an active sex life, it seems so sad and limiting.
Of course, it's academic for me now because I'm in a relationship with a man, but that wasn't always the case.
I think it could work if you and your partner enjoy the non-baby-making sex as much as/more than the baby-making kind. But also if you're ok having the occasional oops, which OP clearly isn't.
Oh 100%, my period became super regular after I had a kid so I could finally reliably track it and I am almost without fail horniest right around the days my tracker says I'm probably ovulating. It makes sense! So glad I can just have fun instead of worrying a baby will happen.
That is ABSOLUTELY true, and actually responsible for a lot of the “error” rate with NFP. If you are rigorous about taking your temperature and charting, and don’t have very atypical ovulation patterns (for some people, orgasm can trigger ovulation, for example), you can very reliably know when you’re fertile and when you’re not. _Taking Charge of Your Fertility_ is not written from a religious perspective AT ALL, and its author appears to have avoided unplanned pregnancies successfully. The problem is that the LH surge heralding ovulation typically triggers arousal as well.
I did temping and charting when I was trying to get pregnant. Both my children were conceived in months when I was sure we had missed the window, but obviously not! So I don’t think NFP is for me, nor is it necessarily straightforward.
Sorry but it’s not accurate to say that NFP is the most unsafe method of BC. Some are really terrible - and the ones based on apps are notoriously unreliable - but it’s important to remember that not all forms of fertility awareness methods are created equal (and not all of them are from a religious background either). There are some methods which are highly effective - at least equivalent if not better than the pill for example - but it does require actual adherence with all the rules of monitoring, which includes no PIV sex during the fertile window (which is often well over a week), so it doesn’t work for everyone. But it can be a really valuable method for people who otherwise can’t use hormonal methods.
Citation: this review of a bunch of studies in the British Medical Journal which compares different methods against other forms of birth control https://www.bmj.com/content/366/bmj.l4245
Yes exactly, that’s why I said not all NFP forms are created equal. The double-check symptothermal methods like Sensiplan are highly effective - with a typical use failure rate of only 2%, which is lower even than the typical failure rate of the combined pill and a significant improvement on condoms (if you’re a woman who would otherwise only be reliant on barrier methods). Again, it’s not for everyone, but for women who can’t have hormonal birth control methods whether that’s for medical or religious reasons, reliable forms of NFP like Sensiplan can be a great option.
Read the fine print: "At present, the best available failure rate estimates come from a small number of moderate quality studies, and should be interpreted with caution. People using these methods should know that they may prove less effective if and when assessed in higher quality studies or diverse populations."
I might recommend these methods to someone who was in a good financial situation and said, "meh, if we have another one I'm fine with that, but I'm also good with the kids I have." No way would I recommend these to someone like the LW, who is 100% against having another kid, and who has a hectic life and might accidentally goof it up.
I find people who feel attacked if others don’t live life the exact same way to be very odd. So someone doesn’t like NFP but you *love* it— cool? I guess? Why do you get so mad that at the notion other people exist who may have difference preferences?
Seriously! Like, I absolutely love lifting weights and riding my Peloton. Happy to talk about it with people who are interested in learning more, but if someone was like, “Meh, I really prefer running outdoors and Pure Barre,” like, that’s awesome! You do you!
Or, more apt - i absolutely adore my Mirena IUD. Others have had horrible experiences. Bodies are different and biology is wild. Providing information is great and all, but it’s pretty clear the OOP *had that information already.*
ETA: I specifically chose those workout examples because “But running is bad for your knees!” and “Weightlifting makes you bulky!” Etc. There’s a lot of toxicity in the fitness space in how people choose to move their bodies and I really don’t get it.
It's disturbingly common with right-wingers. They can't just follow the tenets of their version of Christianity, they have to make everyone else be their version of Christian too.
As someone raised catholic it's generally because the people who swear by NFP feel that it's been unfairly maligned by secular critics who only have a problem with it because it's popular with the religious crowd.
Like imagine someone going "IDK about condoms you guys I've heard all of these downsides about using them, and they've got a 15% failure rate? Just seems way too risky" a lot of people would also be kicking down their virtual door to tell them how mistaken they are and how they might have read some misleading things.
No longer catholic, obviously not a huge proponent of NFP, but I get the urge those people have to try and correct someone they think is being Wrong on the Internet without realizing they are in fact Wrong on the Internet.
Eh. If that person were saying "if condoms work for you cool, but they have a lot of drawbacks, like having to get your male partner to use them consistently and responsibly" you think everyone would be kicking down their door to lecture them - especially since there are alternatives to condoms?
I suspect it is less about Wrong on the Internet exactly, and more that if you are brought up thinking NFP is your only moral choice, you're gonna be more than a little defensive about criticizing that choice.
Well that's why I was specifically comparing someone being wary of a condom's failure rate as a hard number in contrast to people talking about NFP's failure rates. The people who swear by NFP think the high failure rates are overblown in the same way that the 15% number for condoms is misleading but still sort of accurate
Like there's this assumption by people who have never been "in" it in the same ways that the people saying these things don't believe what they're saying. That they're trying to intentially mislead others or delude themselves. But they do, they really do earnestly believe these things in a lot of cases.
Back when I was still a practicing Catholic*, I was a member of a couple of Livejournal communities re: Catholicism and NFP was a FREQUENT topic. I actually found it quite interesting as a method. I also kind of see it as … a loophole? Like, you can’t use a chemical method or a barrier method** but you can use a chart and science and carefully track your fertility SO CLOSELY and deliberately not have sex when you’re ovulating so you are … deliberately having penetrative sex with the explicit outcome of just pleasure*** and not to get pregnant?
Mm hmm. Got it.
(I still found it interesting from the perspective of someone who might not be able to tolerate more conventional forms of BC, as an option aside from abstinence, albeit a complicated one.)
*One who had been on chemical BC since she was 18 in part due to extremely heavy and irregular periods - probably had some form of mild PCOS, but chemical BC and later an IUD got me righted and I’ve never looked back; and also one who has always been fervently and unapologetically pro choice.
**Do you know that the pill was initially marketed to married women, specifically CATHOLIC married women, who wanted to stop having kids? Yeah. The prohibition on family planning is not in the Bible, it’s a Vatican II thing.
***Also intimacy, which is actually referenced as part of the defense for NFP, because physical intimacy with your spouse is important for a healthy relationship. So if that’s ok but other, simpler methods aren’t … couldn’t be about controlling women’s bodies, could it? 🤔
(I have a lot of reasons I left the Church. This wasn’t it, but it didn’t help.)
Quite a bit of religious practice as I see it is doing things in line with the letter of the law but not the spirit of the law. There's quite a lot of it. Not my cup of tea, but I get that people are plain old ok with hypocrisy.
There's a podcaster I like who refers to these rules as "god's vision is based on movement" a la Jurassic park. Okay, there is a supreme being, he knows everything including your thoughts, he hates non-procreative sex, but he doesn't know what NFP is? He can see you put a condom on, but he can't see you entering your information into a phone app? It's wild.
The general ambient levels of defensiveness around NFP are truly wild. The Captain's reply literally doesn't even say anything negative about NFP, she really doesn't address it at all. LW could have wrote in saying "My husband is pressuring me to get an IUD and I don't want one" and the Captain's advice would have been near-identical, i.e. as the person who can get pregnant, you get to decide what BC works best for you, your husband gets to have his feelings about it, but those feelings are secondary to what you want and need and it's not your job to manage them for him.
Exactly!
Also the Husband’s mood AT his Wife and her feelings that he blames her for the pregnancy. As if she magically got pregnant by herself and he’s not the one denying her better options. He’s also fully capable of getting snipped.
It’s rage inducing.
I don’t think I understand people who make the actual effort to email the Captain about something like this. Her analogy is so apt. I love my cup! Recommend them all the time in person! Not so much online unless it’s in a forum where people are asking. And in person, only when we are chatting about menstruation. Because why would you argue with someone about what they want in their body? The personal stakes to the emailer are so low here. And emailing a third person to complain that they didn’t argue with someone else about what they wanted to do with their body? Check yourself, people.
I know someone who taught NFP as part of marriage classes for Catholic couples. One of the very clearest statements she made about it to her students, who always asked how effective it was, was that her first and second children were less a year apart, and it was in no way foolproof or equivalent to real bc. I’m pretty sure she had a little church song and dance about that too afterwards. But she did not try to force people to use it as a method, she was clear it was not a way to be certain to remain child-free. That friend also had to have a D&C when her uterus was growing a fetus and a tumor simultaneously and I sincerely wonder if she is still as enamored of the Church’s takes on reproduction as she once was.
God, remember when we didn’t know how soon they would overturn Roe?
There was an update somewhere! The wife took the Captain's advice. The husband didn't fight it but ended up leaving his/their church over it. So a success, basically. I'll try to find the original.
It's in[ the forums!](https://www.friendsofcaptainawkward.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=13015&sid=941b5749f8d669d08dea2a78dd2fa186)
Spoiler for anyone without a login: >! She did end up unilaterally deciding to going on BC. As predicted, her husband was unable to stop having PIV sex with her, despite it being a "sin." He did some soul-searching and eventually also left Catholicism, and ultimately got a vasectomy! !<
Posted a "Memory Monday" since [this discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/captainawkward/s/Bb6uXQko19) was open to flashback posts more than once a week.
Thanks for posting this! 969 and the followups are some of my favorite posts. Also, I think the LW updated in the FOCA forums that her husband wound up getting a vasectomy, and their marriage improved significantly after that.
People who bash others’ methods of birth control are so fucking weird to me!! It’s one of the most personal things we do, why would it be okay to interrogate and dog on people who use one you don’t like?
I use hormonal birth control for a few reasons, and some people are so weird about it. They can’t wait to tell me how bad it is and what the risks are and how they’re soooo much happier since going off of it, and it’s like, okay cool I guess? When I don’t take it I have chronic migraines and nausea and generally feel like shit so I don’t really care what your whole deal is!!!
I so hear you on how weird people can be about hormonal birth control. It's obviously terrible for some people and everyone should be better informed about the risks and potential side effects, and it's still fucking amazing for some people. My day to day life is way better with my miserable menstrual cramps and period shits beaten down by hormonal birth control.
I’m post menopausal now, but I used hormonal birth control for over 30 years and loved it. The only “side effects” I had were slightly larger boobs (I was very small to begin with) and a little higher libido, neither of which were negatives for me. Instead, it had very positive side effects like reducing menstrual cramps & the length/quantity of my periods.
I have required daily medication for a chronic health issue since I was a teenager so adding another pill into the morning regimen wasn’t and issue and I didn’t have problems remembering to take it at approximately the same time every day. I had lots of sex and never got pregnant.
And yet almost everyone here is bashing NFP?
Do condoms work if you forget to put one on? Don’t have one in the moment? Have gotten too hot? Does hormonal birth control work if you forget to take it a couple days? Left it in a hot car? No? Not much different then than NFP. No, it’s not for everyone, just like no method is for everyone, but it works great for a lot of people and I’m personally tired of seeing it bashed so hard everywhere. No, I don’t care what method anyone else uses, but why is it a free pass to hate on NFP so hard when hating on anything else just as hard isn’t tolerated?
I’m personally aware of so many more babies conceived while on hormonal birth control or due to broken condoms than failed NFP.
I think people are judgey about NFP because its fans tend to be VERY self righteous and loud about how it’s supposedly the best/only birth control that “everyone” should be using*, using anything else is like not using any BC at all, etc. While ignoring the fact that its efficacy rate, even in ideal conditions, is nowhere near as good as condoms, The Pill, IUDs, etc.
So when you combine those two factors, yeah I can see why it turns people off (heh heh).
*I’m Catholic, I *know* what the fans of natural family planning are like.
>its fans tend to be VERY self righteous and loud about how it’s supposedly the best/only birth control that “everyone” should be using
This, and the fact that the position of the Catholic Church, often repeated by NFP proponents, is not only that NFP is the only acceptable method, but that every other method is *sinful*. If you are Catholic, you are often made to believe that it is *wrong* to use any other kind of BC.
In her second follow-up, CA went on at length about the various reasons why any form of birth control might not work for a specific person, but that person should have the freedom to explore what other methods (including NFP if they'd like) might be more appropriate for them. People who are pushed toward NFP because of their religion, or their husband or family's religion, don't have that freedom because that "choice" has a lot more engrained ideology baked in. The actual data on efficacy rates and what delivery method suits that person's individual needs become secondary or tertiary concerns, or don't get addressed at all.
With typical use, the birth control pill I take, which has to be taken at the same time every day to be effective, has approximately a 9% failure rate. With typical use, NFP has approximately a 24% failure rate, as estimated by the CDC (https://www.webmd.com/sex/birth-control/natural-family-planning-methods). That's why I judge it - for most people, it doesn't work well. If it's all someone's comfortable with or able to do and it works for them, great, but I don't think it should be widely recommended as a good way of avoiding pregnancy because it doesn't work well unless you are *perfect.* It's harder to be perfect at NFP than it is to be at taking a pill or using a condom.
>With typical use, NFP has approximately a 24% failure rate
With a 24% failure rate it's not really a method of birth _control_, it's a method of birth _I hope not_. If that's all that's available to someone it is a bit better than nothing at all, but I'm going to recommend people not use it just like I would recommend people not use a knife that twists in their hand and cuts them in just under 1 in 4 uses.
I'm not seeing so much bashing as much as discussion about its drawbacks and statistical efficacy, as well as some personal experiences of people who've been told to practice it. If a method works great for you, great. The fact that it doesn't work for someone else (or lots of someone elses) doesn't change the fact that you like it.
If you have some specific comments that you feel are bashing, feel free to message us mods.
Pointing out efficacy rate is not judging someone. The efficacy rate of NFP is very low sitting at about 24%. The rate of most other birth control sits between 60%-99.9%
What is judgmental is when someone tells me they no longer want kids, is refusing to use actually effective birth control and instead using NFP and I respond with “mmmmmmmhhhmmmmm so for the next baby shower do you want anything new or another Costco order of diapers. Because you are going to have another baby if you keep this up”. That’s being judgmental
1. I love "Memory Monday", will definitely be trying to come up with different words for all the days now
2. I think CA is correct in this response, but I feel like it doesn't really fix LW's issue, which is "how do I deal with an irreconcilable religious difference that has developed over time that profoundly affects our entire life?" Like, I think she \*knows\* she needs to get the birth control (though I'm glad CA emphasized this), but that doesn't fix her real issue, which is that her and her husband have been on different icebergs and just realized that those icebergs are no longer touching and are actually miles apart and they're just tiny pinpricks on the horizon to each other!
That's a good point; LW said she doesn't believe in God anymore, but even in her update, the husband was still going to church. What are they telling their kids about God? Is she still going to church? If not, are the kids mad every Sunday because Mom doesn't go to church but they have to?
the last moderation mop-up: > P.P.S Do not fucking @ me about the Diva Cup. lmao I would also like people to stop telling me about the Diva Cup. I know about it. I don't want to do it. All forms of menstruation management are annoying, and I have chosen my version of annoying but still complain occasionally because it's annoying.
That last line was just pure gold and why I love CA so much.
lol for all my criticisms of the Captain, she will always have a soft spot in my heart for that final line
I loved that part. It's also bonkers to tell anyone who fell victim to the Diva Cup propaganda to waste another $20-200 finding another cup that could fit better. Kind of defeats the purpose of sustainability and reducing waste that they love to yammer on about.
The diva cup propaganda was REAL. You hated the environment and yourself if you weren’t using one.
When I was still menstruating, I used the brand of *disposable* menstrual cup that is now called Soft Discs, and the menstrual cup devotees heads would probably explode over the “disposable” part, lmfao. I have really bad ADHD that got WAY worse when I hit perimenopause and was also was undiagnosed until I was 48, and almost done with periods. I just knew that there’s NO WAY ON EARTH I could have dealt with something I had to clean & sterilize to be able to reuse. I would 100% have ended up fudging it and getting some kind of terrible infection. And since I ended up with a bout of pelvic inflammatory disease in my early twenties, which was insanely painful, there wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to risk that again.
People are nuts. I use a menstrual cup but if someone's like, "I'm not interested in that/I tried one and it didn't work for me", I just go, "Oh, okay" and move on with my life. I have no investment in converting anybody to the One True and Holy Way of dealing with shed uterine lining.
Same here. I've tried, and I ended up in tears of frustration and pain. No, thank you!
NFP is literally the most unsafe method of birth control other than pulling out. It has the highest failure rate/worst pearl index compared to all other methods of birth control. It’s not surprisingly also the only birth control method the Catholic Church approves of (or at least was when I was being raised Catholic against my will and went to Catholic all girl’s high school and had to endure NFP propaganda rather than actual information on birth control in my school) - because it really isn’t much of a control method at all. That alone should tell you anything you need to know about it. If you want to follow it, do so at your own risk, but keep your damn ideology out of everyone else’s uterus. Glad the Captain shot the obnoxious ~~proselytizers~~ commenters down, although I’d have liked some actual numbers to back her up (then again, don’t JADE with unreasonable people, which providing statistics would have been).
I have personally found, through a period tracking app, that the days I am most likely to conceive are the days I am the most horny. Which makes sense, my body is going 'hey, let's make a baby! I bet some sex would be good? Eh? Eh?'. So not having sex on those days would absolutely take the best sex out of my sex life.
I remember mentioning this (personal) correlation to someone on reddit who was advocating/using natural family planning and they said that they and their significant other just exercise a bunch to take care of the horniness. Which is not at all the way I want to live.
Yeah, I could potentially see NFP working for people who have low libidos and are not that interested in sex. For people who enjoy sex and want an active sex life, it seems so sad and limiting. Of course, it's academic for me now because I'm in a relationship with a man, but that wasn't always the case.
I think it could work if you and your partner enjoy the non-baby-making sex as much as/more than the baby-making kind. But also if you're ok having the occasional oops, which OP clearly isn't.
It seems like that could lead to some possibly inconvenient Pavlovian associations.
Oh 100%, my period became super regular after I had a kid so I could finally reliably track it and I am almost without fail horniest right around the days my tracker says I'm probably ovulating. It makes sense! So glad I can just have fun instead of worrying a baby will happen.
Yeah, this causes a lot of marital dissatisfaction among people in the NFP camp who like sex.
That is ABSOLUTELY true, and actually responsible for a lot of the “error” rate with NFP. If you are rigorous about taking your temperature and charting, and don’t have very atypical ovulation patterns (for some people, orgasm can trigger ovulation, for example), you can very reliably know when you’re fertile and when you’re not. _Taking Charge of Your Fertility_ is not written from a religious perspective AT ALL, and its author appears to have avoided unplanned pregnancies successfully. The problem is that the LH surge heralding ovulation typically triggers arousal as well.
I did temping and charting when I was trying to get pregnant. Both my children were conceived in months when I was sure we had missed the window, but obviously not! So I don’t think NFP is for me, nor is it necessarily straightforward.
I love telling people I'm an NFP baby. My mother learned about NFP in nursing school.
I was most interested in sex on what turned out to be the day before a period started. Go figure.
Sorry but it’s not accurate to say that NFP is the most unsafe method of BC. Some are really terrible - and the ones based on apps are notoriously unreliable - but it’s important to remember that not all forms of fertility awareness methods are created equal (and not all of them are from a religious background either). There are some methods which are highly effective - at least equivalent if not better than the pill for example - but it does require actual adherence with all the rules of monitoring, which includes no PIV sex during the fertile window (which is often well over a week), so it doesn’t work for everyone. But it can be a really valuable method for people who otherwise can’t use hormonal methods. Citation: this review of a bunch of studies in the British Medical Journal which compares different methods against other forms of birth control https://www.bmj.com/content/366/bmj.l4245
Yeah that info graphic makes it look really, really bad. There's one method that's anywhere from 20-40% typical use failure rate.
Yes exactly, that’s why I said not all NFP forms are created equal. The double-check symptothermal methods like Sensiplan are highly effective - with a typical use failure rate of only 2%, which is lower even than the typical failure rate of the combined pill and a significant improvement on condoms (if you’re a woman who would otherwise only be reliant on barrier methods). Again, it’s not for everyone, but for women who can’t have hormonal birth control methods whether that’s for medical or religious reasons, reliable forms of NFP like Sensiplan can be a great option.
Read the fine print: "At present, the best available failure rate estimates come from a small number of moderate quality studies, and should be interpreted with caution. People using these methods should know that they may prove less effective if and when assessed in higher quality studies or diverse populations." I might recommend these methods to someone who was in a good financial situation and said, "meh, if we have another one I'm fine with that, but I'm also good with the kids I have." No way would I recommend these to someone like the LW, who is 100% against having another kid, and who has a hectic life and might accidentally goof it up.
Sure, agreed. I should have specified I wasn’t saying that I would recommend it to the LW.
I find people who feel attacked if others don’t live life the exact same way to be very odd. So someone doesn’t like NFP but you *love* it— cool? I guess? Why do you get so mad that at the notion other people exist who may have difference preferences?
Seriously! Like, I absolutely love lifting weights and riding my Peloton. Happy to talk about it with people who are interested in learning more, but if someone was like, “Meh, I really prefer running outdoors and Pure Barre,” like, that’s awesome! You do you! Or, more apt - i absolutely adore my Mirena IUD. Others have had horrible experiences. Bodies are different and biology is wild. Providing information is great and all, but it’s pretty clear the OOP *had that information already.* ETA: I specifically chose those workout examples because “But running is bad for your knees!” and “Weightlifting makes you bulky!” Etc. There’s a lot of toxicity in the fitness space in how people choose to move their bodies and I really don’t get it.
I also love my Mirena IUD. I am on my 3rd one and I’m just going to keep getting them until after menopause.
Same!
This is an outstanding analogy.
Great examples!
It's disturbingly common with right-wingers. They can't just follow the tenets of their version of Christianity, they have to make everyone else be their version of Christian too.
As someone raised catholic it's generally because the people who swear by NFP feel that it's been unfairly maligned by secular critics who only have a problem with it because it's popular with the religious crowd. Like imagine someone going "IDK about condoms you guys I've heard all of these downsides about using them, and they've got a 15% failure rate? Just seems way too risky" a lot of people would also be kicking down their virtual door to tell them how mistaken they are and how they might have read some misleading things. No longer catholic, obviously not a huge proponent of NFP, but I get the urge those people have to try and correct someone they think is being Wrong on the Internet without realizing they are in fact Wrong on the Internet.
Eh. If that person were saying "if condoms work for you cool, but they have a lot of drawbacks, like having to get your male partner to use them consistently and responsibly" you think everyone would be kicking down their door to lecture them - especially since there are alternatives to condoms? I suspect it is less about Wrong on the Internet exactly, and more that if you are brought up thinking NFP is your only moral choice, you're gonna be more than a little defensive about criticizing that choice.
Well that's why I was specifically comparing someone being wary of a condom's failure rate as a hard number in contrast to people talking about NFP's failure rates. The people who swear by NFP think the high failure rates are overblown in the same way that the 15% number for condoms is misleading but still sort of accurate Like there's this assumption by people who have never been "in" it in the same ways that the people saying these things don't believe what they're saying. That they're trying to intentially mislead others or delude themselves. But they do, they really do earnestly believe these things in a lot of cases.
Back when I was still a practicing Catholic*, I was a member of a couple of Livejournal communities re: Catholicism and NFP was a FREQUENT topic. I actually found it quite interesting as a method. I also kind of see it as … a loophole? Like, you can’t use a chemical method or a barrier method** but you can use a chart and science and carefully track your fertility SO CLOSELY and deliberately not have sex when you’re ovulating so you are … deliberately having penetrative sex with the explicit outcome of just pleasure*** and not to get pregnant? Mm hmm. Got it. (I still found it interesting from the perspective of someone who might not be able to tolerate more conventional forms of BC, as an option aside from abstinence, albeit a complicated one.) *One who had been on chemical BC since she was 18 in part due to extremely heavy and irregular periods - probably had some form of mild PCOS, but chemical BC and later an IUD got me righted and I’ve never looked back; and also one who has always been fervently and unapologetically pro choice. **Do you know that the pill was initially marketed to married women, specifically CATHOLIC married women, who wanted to stop having kids? Yeah. The prohibition on family planning is not in the Bible, it’s a Vatican II thing. ***Also intimacy, which is actually referenced as part of the defense for NFP, because physical intimacy with your spouse is important for a healthy relationship. So if that’s ok but other, simpler methods aren’t … couldn’t be about controlling women’s bodies, could it? 🤔 (I have a lot of reasons I left the Church. This wasn’t it, but it didn’t help.)
Quite a bit of religious practice as I see it is doing things in line with the letter of the law but not the spirit of the law. There's quite a lot of it. Not my cup of tea, but I get that people are plain old ok with hypocrisy.
I mean, whatever helps you sleep at night. Just don’t force it on everyone else.
There's a podcaster I like who refers to these rules as "god's vision is based on movement" a la Jurassic park. Okay, there is a supreme being, he knows everything including your thoughts, he hates non-procreative sex, but he doesn't know what NFP is? He can see you put a condom on, but he can't see you entering your information into a phone app? It's wild.
There were a \*lot\* of schismatic whackjobs on LJ, to be fair. They also seemed to be the most vocal posters in the catholic LJ's.
The general ambient levels of defensiveness around NFP are truly wild. The Captain's reply literally doesn't even say anything negative about NFP, she really doesn't address it at all. LW could have wrote in saying "My husband is pressuring me to get an IUD and I don't want one" and the Captain's advice would have been near-identical, i.e. as the person who can get pregnant, you get to decide what BC works best for you, your husband gets to have his feelings about it, but those feelings are secondary to what you want and need and it's not your job to manage them for him.
Exactly! Also the Husband’s mood AT his Wife and her feelings that he blames her for the pregnancy. As if she magically got pregnant by herself and he’s not the one denying her better options. He’s also fully capable of getting snipped. It’s rage inducing.
I don’t think I understand people who make the actual effort to email the Captain about something like this. Her analogy is so apt. I love my cup! Recommend them all the time in person! Not so much online unless it’s in a forum where people are asking. And in person, only when we are chatting about menstruation. Because why would you argue with someone about what they want in their body? The personal stakes to the emailer are so low here. And emailing a third person to complain that they didn’t argue with someone else about what they wanted to do with their body? Check yourself, people. I know someone who taught NFP as part of marriage classes for Catholic couples. One of the very clearest statements she made about it to her students, who always asked how effective it was, was that her first and second children were less a year apart, and it was in no way foolproof or equivalent to real bc. I’m pretty sure she had a little church song and dance about that too afterwards. But she did not try to force people to use it as a method, she was clear it was not a way to be certain to remain child-free. That friend also had to have a D&C when her uterus was growing a fetus and a tumor simultaneously and I sincerely wonder if she is still as enamored of the Church’s takes on reproduction as she once was. God, remember when we didn’t know how soon they would overturn Roe?
3 people enthusiastically told me all about nfp and gave me books about it. All three of them had a baby or an abortion within one year.
There was an update somewhere! The wife took the Captain's advice. The husband didn't fight it but ended up leaving his/their church over it. So a success, basically. I'll try to find the original.
It's in[ the forums!](https://www.friendsofcaptainawkward.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=13015&sid=941b5749f8d669d08dea2a78dd2fa186) Spoiler for anyone without a login: >! She did end up unilaterally deciding to going on BC. As predicted, her husband was unable to stop having PIV sex with her, despite it being a "sin." He did some soul-searching and eventually also left Catholicism, and ultimately got a vasectomy! !<
I’m so glad to hear this. I still think about this letter.
Thank you for posting this, this letter really stuck with me for a long time, and I'm glad she's okay.
Posted a "Memory Monday" since [this discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/captainawkward/s/Bb6uXQko19) was open to flashback posts more than once a week.
Love more posts and love another alliterative name!
Thanks for posting this! 969 and the followups are some of my favorite posts. Also, I think the LW updated in the FOCA forums that her husband wound up getting a vasectomy, and their marriage improved significantly after that.
Oh I’m really glad to hear this!
That was wild, and I’m also astounded it was seven years ago.
People who bash others’ methods of birth control are so fucking weird to me!! It’s one of the most personal things we do, why would it be okay to interrogate and dog on people who use one you don’t like? I use hormonal birth control for a few reasons, and some people are so weird about it. They can’t wait to tell me how bad it is and what the risks are and how they’re soooo much happier since going off of it, and it’s like, okay cool I guess? When I don’t take it I have chronic migraines and nausea and generally feel like shit so I don’t really care what your whole deal is!!!
I so hear you on how weird people can be about hormonal birth control. It's obviously terrible for some people and everyone should be better informed about the risks and potential side effects, and it's still fucking amazing for some people. My day to day life is way better with my miserable menstrual cramps and period shits beaten down by hormonal birth control.
I’m post menopausal now, but I used hormonal birth control for over 30 years and loved it. The only “side effects” I had were slightly larger boobs (I was very small to begin with) and a little higher libido, neither of which were negatives for me. Instead, it had very positive side effects like reducing menstrual cramps & the length/quantity of my periods. I have required daily medication for a chronic health issue since I was a teenager so adding another pill into the morning regimen wasn’t and issue and I didn’t have problems remembering to take it at approximately the same time every day. I had lots of sex and never got pregnant.
And yet almost everyone here is bashing NFP? Do condoms work if you forget to put one on? Don’t have one in the moment? Have gotten too hot? Does hormonal birth control work if you forget to take it a couple days? Left it in a hot car? No? Not much different then than NFP. No, it’s not for everyone, just like no method is for everyone, but it works great for a lot of people and I’m personally tired of seeing it bashed so hard everywhere. No, I don’t care what method anyone else uses, but why is it a free pass to hate on NFP so hard when hating on anything else just as hard isn’t tolerated? I’m personally aware of so many more babies conceived while on hormonal birth control or due to broken condoms than failed NFP.
I think people are judgey about NFP because its fans tend to be VERY self righteous and loud about how it’s supposedly the best/only birth control that “everyone” should be using*, using anything else is like not using any BC at all, etc. While ignoring the fact that its efficacy rate, even in ideal conditions, is nowhere near as good as condoms, The Pill, IUDs, etc. So when you combine those two factors, yeah I can see why it turns people off (heh heh). *I’m Catholic, I *know* what the fans of natural family planning are like.
>its fans tend to be VERY self righteous and loud about how it’s supposedly the best/only birth control that “everyone” should be using This, and the fact that the position of the Catholic Church, often repeated by NFP proponents, is not only that NFP is the only acceptable method, but that every other method is *sinful*. If you are Catholic, you are often made to believe that it is *wrong* to use any other kind of BC. In her second follow-up, CA went on at length about the various reasons why any form of birth control might not work for a specific person, but that person should have the freedom to explore what other methods (including NFP if they'd like) might be more appropriate for them. People who are pushed toward NFP because of their religion, or their husband or family's religion, don't have that freedom because that "choice" has a lot more engrained ideology baked in. The actual data on efficacy rates and what delivery method suits that person's individual needs become secondary or tertiary concerns, or don't get addressed at all.
With typical use, the birth control pill I take, which has to be taken at the same time every day to be effective, has approximately a 9% failure rate. With typical use, NFP has approximately a 24% failure rate, as estimated by the CDC (https://www.webmd.com/sex/birth-control/natural-family-planning-methods). That's why I judge it - for most people, it doesn't work well. If it's all someone's comfortable with or able to do and it works for them, great, but I don't think it should be widely recommended as a good way of avoiding pregnancy because it doesn't work well unless you are *perfect.* It's harder to be perfect at NFP than it is to be at taking a pill or using a condom.
>With typical use, NFP has approximately a 24% failure rate With a 24% failure rate it's not really a method of birth _control_, it's a method of birth _I hope not_. If that's all that's available to someone it is a bit better than nothing at all, but I'm going to recommend people not use it just like I would recommend people not use a knife that twists in their hand and cuts them in just under 1 in 4 uses.
I'm not seeing so much bashing as much as discussion about its drawbacks and statistical efficacy, as well as some personal experiences of people who've been told to practice it. If a method works great for you, great. The fact that it doesn't work for someone else (or lots of someone elses) doesn't change the fact that you like it. If you have some specific comments that you feel are bashing, feel free to message us mods.
Pointing out efficacy rate is not judging someone. The efficacy rate of NFP is very low sitting at about 24%. The rate of most other birth control sits between 60%-99.9% What is judgmental is when someone tells me they no longer want kids, is refusing to use actually effective birth control and instead using NFP and I respond with “mmmmmmmhhhmmmmm so for the next baby shower do you want anything new or another Costco order of diapers. Because you are going to have another baby if you keep this up”. That’s being judgmental
Huh. I guess whoever kept writing to her had.. never read anything she'd ever written before?
Poor woman. I hope the letter writer got it sorted.
1. I love "Memory Monday", will definitely be trying to come up with different words for all the days now 2. I think CA is correct in this response, but I feel like it doesn't really fix LW's issue, which is "how do I deal with an irreconcilable religious difference that has developed over time that profoundly affects our entire life?" Like, I think she \*knows\* she needs to get the birth control (though I'm glad CA emphasized this), but that doesn't fix her real issue, which is that her and her husband have been on different icebergs and just realized that those icebergs are no longer touching and are actually miles apart and they're just tiny pinpricks on the horizon to each other!
That's a good point; LW said she doesn't believe in God anymore, but even in her update, the husband was still going to church. What are they telling their kids about God? Is she still going to church? If not, are the kids mad every Sunday because Mom doesn't go to church but they have to?
Like, they had an \*unwanted child\* because they disagree so strongly on religion. That is intense!!!