Let us be honest. For many couples, the days of abstinence are the hardest part of Natural Family Planning. Desire does not consult the chart, and for many women it is strongest precisely around ovulation. Couples can feel frustration, loneliness, resentment or simple fatigue. None of this means you are failing. It means you are human, living a real discipline inside a real marriage.
Why the Church sees value here
The Church teaches that periodic continence respects the bodies of the spouses, encourages tenderness between them and favors the education of an authentic freedom (CCC 2370). Pope Paul VI wrote that this discipline, far from harming conjugal love, confers on it a higher human value, while demanding continual effort (Humanae Vitae 21). Chastity is not the suppression of sexuality but its integration, the inner unity of a person in body and spirit (CCC 2337). In marriage, chastity sometimes says yes and sometimes says not now, and both can be acts of love.
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Sources
- CCC 2370 Catechism of the Catholic Church, Periodic continence
- CCC 2337 Catechism of the Catholic Church, The vocation to chastity
- CCC 1641 Catechism of the Catholic Church, The grace proper to the sacrament of Matrimony
- Humanae Vitae 21 Humanae Vitae (Paul VI, 1968), Mastery of self
- Amoris Laetitia 122 Amoris Laetitia (Francis, 2016), Married love as a dynamic process