To think that some married women on here think they are better than unmarried women?

[malificent7]

After reading the thread about legal rights, marriage and birth certificates I was struck by the patronising way in which some married women spoke to those who are cohabiting or not married.
True married women have better rights but it was the way in which the relationships of unmarried women were dismissed as lesser and these women were being sneered at.

Someone told a woman who had been cohabiting that her relationship meant nothing and that if you are not married you are single.
REALLY? I am not married but I am not single. I don't even live with the guy but why is my relationship seen as less valid? Some married people hate each other and don't have the guts to leave. Some of the best love affairs involve people who live miles apart.
I don't like the fact that I have to put single on a form . Why can I not be in a relationship?

Ok, If you are married you have some legal rights and security that the unmarried have but shouldn't we question this? Why should we make vows especially if you don't believe in the laws of marriage? Also, it was originally a religious ceremony..I don't believe in God and I am not a commodity to be given away by my dad to another male.

Does it lead to stability? My dp is divorced. The marriage vows didn't stop things from falling apart.

Marriage can be a great thing but the tone in the last thread was old fashioned and practically berated women for not managing to get a man to marry them. Surely there has to be other options if you don't believe in marriage ? It is a patriarchal tradition after all to do with male prperty rights. Also, many men want pre nuptuals as they are now wise to gold digging wives.

I think you can have some marriages which have less love than some cohabiting relationships. Why is one type of relationship more valid? I find it all very old fashioned.

Judging by the number of men who don't leave their wives a dime on divorce, I am not convinced by the stability argument.

Well in our case it should've been a safe day, but I plead guilty as charged to being idiots.

I had lots of “unprotected” sex using fertility awareness and only ever got pregnant when it was my fertile time of the month. I’m not saying I’d recommend it for people who wouldn’t ultimately be ok with having a child but I do think it’s something they should teach at school or something (even with the whole “ewwwww mucus” factor) because even though I’m too lazy for temping these days (we use condoms now) it gave me a lot of insight into my body which is really nice to have.

I do have the advantage of being super regular though.

Ours was unplanned. I genuinely forgot to take the pill every day. I still do this with daily medication now, hence why I am now on the implant

The rhythm method appears to be coming into vogue with lots of adverts for fertility tracker apps. I was always taught that it was an abysmal contraception method.

DieAntword
My poor phrasing. In my head I count natural family planning (when done properly, not oh my app said based on a 28 day cycle...) as protected. But would also assume anyone using natural planning knows that cycles can go off some months.

I'm trying to be the generous rather than bitter infertile

I'm guessing (no fucking idea, the idea of an unexpected pregnancy is baffling to me) examples could hypothetically be

• I didn't think I was in my fertile period so thought we'd probably be OK

• it took us ages to get pregnant before, so I assume the chances of catching first time are low (as Paul mentioned in her case)

• we've been careless loads of times before and never been caught out: we seem to be invincible and so I assume we will get away with it again this time

Still not unplanned though. Active choice not to use contraception. The potential outcome of which may be pregnancy.

The rhythm method appears to be coming into vogue with lots of adverts for fertility tracker apps. I was always taught that it was an abysmal contraception method.

The problem with the apps is they are using untested algoarithms to predict your fertile period. Symptothermal method is pretty effective in most people I think.

Well worked for me anyway. It’s hardly rhythm, and there’s all kind of caveats the apps don’t mention like, if you even suspect you might be ill you can’t trust your temperature, if you didn’t get enough sleep you can’t trust it etc etc.

We only ever went without condoms after ovulation as well because the before ovulation time is a bit more iffy. Once you know you’ve ovulated it’s extremely unlikely to happen again.

Sorry!

Second example was @Thatsfuckingshit not @PaulDacreRimsGeese

Apols. Mis remembered

Having unprotected sex says 'I'm open to having a baby'.

I had lots of unprotected sex with lots of different men when going through a mental health crisis in my late teen years. Sure, somewhere I knew I could get pregnant, but I wasn't up for having a baby. I would have aborted it. But it didn't happen, fortunately. I had unprotected sex because I didn't feel confident/comfortable enough to ask the guys to use a condom, I just let them do what they wanted and they never asked me about contraception.

@AynRandTheObjectivist natural family planning has appalling failure rates at a population level because its effectiveness depends on

• cycles like clockwork
• completely reliable and predictable fertile signs (not everyone has cervical mucus patterns)
• being utterly religiously about temping at the right time, being honest about any questionable temps (eg drinking the night before)
• being absolutely religious about using barrier methods or abstaining during your potential fertile period

Most people don't / can't do this

Hence whilst it might work for individuals, it's a colossally ineffective form of birth control for the majority of people

No worries banana.

Oh yeah I have heard about the apps. This was way before all that, and it was a stopgap, wouldn't have relied on it long term (if I had then I guess I'd have been better at it!). And tbh if we'd had a condom we'd have probably used that too, we mostly had been doing even on non-fertile days.

I've no real attachment to what definition of planned and unplanned people use, I know there are different viewpoints. If I were in a court of law, I'd feel I had to say it was unplanned in that neither of us were planning to get pregnant or thought we would, so that would be my truth I was telling. No mens rea, but definite recklessness. If someone else wants to call it planned, go for it.

As far as I can tell, NFP works well for the people it works well for. The FPA stats seem to show it's pretty effective (I defer to banana though) but I presume that's partially because women who know full well it's not going to work for them tend to stay away in the first place. So if you have a really irregular cycle, you're not going to try NFP, thus you'll never be counted in the failure rates, whereas you aren't going to know in advance if yours is one of the systems that just doesn't like coils much.

Yep, totally agree Paul

I think the definition is the issue

It depends what people are classifying as NFP -

The symptothermal method which relies on temping and tracking fertile signs.

The billings method relies purely on monitoring cervical mucus patterns to identify signs of ovulation.

The rhythm method - ie Calendar based - which is basically guesswork

Then there are apps which use algorithm to try and predict ovulation. Which have been found to be significantly less effective than claimed and are no longer able to market it as a form of contraception

All are broadly considered under the umbrella NFP

Not all methods are equal - so I'd guess (apols, not read the FPA stats yet) that any data showing high success rates for NFP is probably referring to the most effective form (the symptothermal method). Which as you say is pretty involved, and requires a particular set of circumstances to be effective (shift patterns? Get up in the night? Irregular cycles?). So favourable data is, at a guess, likely to be a self selective group as you've suggested. I would doubt it includes the less reliability methods (happy to be put straight if I'm wrong)

Gah sorry for typos!

Ours was unplanned. I genuinely forgot to take the pill every day. I still do this with daily medication now, hence why I am now on the implant

If you arent taking the pill every day, and don't bother using other protection, knowing that not taking it increases the chance of getting pregnant, then it's not unplanned.

You planned, and did, carry on having unprotected sex.

(NOT CONTRACEPTION ADVICE I AM NOT A HCP) - what I found incredible was that the effectiveness rates for perfect use are pretty similar between using condoms, and the withdrawal method. When used absolutely reliably, the failure rate is staggeringly low. This was the fact the Department of Health funnily enough liked to keep very quiet.

However the ACTUAL effectiveness of this method is, unsurprisingly, much much lower, and not a reliable form of contraception if you're serious about preventing pregnancy - because it relies on willpower and timing of steel on the part of the male partner. Pretty risky!

If you arent taking the pill every day, and don't bother using other protection, knowing that not taking it increases the chance of getting pregnant, then it's not unplanned.

You planned, and did, carry on having unprotected sex

Er, no actually! I FORGOT. As in, when I was having unprotected sex I hadn't actually realised that I hadn't taken my pill that morning. I guess if I forget to take my anti-depressents in the morning then I must be planning on having a mental health crises, no - I just don't remember not taking them! I need to be reminded. Hence a change in contraception.

If I were planning on getting pregnant, I would have purposefully with intent "forgotten" my pills and carried on having unprotected sex. That is not what happened.

Er, no actually! I FORGOT. As in, when I was having unprotected sex I hadn't actually realised that I hadn't taken my pill that morning.

You regularly forget to take medication. You didn't put anything in place to make you remember.

If you arent taking your anti depressants regularly, then you are risking a mental health crisis. I know, because I have depression and severe anxiety. You didn't take your pill and have an issue remembering to take medication, the risk is pregnancy. You took the risk and got pregnant.

If you arent taking your anti depressants regularly, then you are risking a mental health crisis. I know, because I have depression and severe anxiety. You didn't take your pill and have an issue remembering to take medication, the risk is pregnancy. You took the risk and got pregnant

I didn't realise I had an issue taking medication daily until I got pregnant. so again, no I didn't knowingly take that risk. I wasn't in therapy or on anti-ds at that time.

NFP is v v involved, hence not suitable for generic population advice. There will be people who can’t be bothered to take their basal temperature correctly every single day, or have the awareness of the factors to skew the basal temperature, thus making it unuseable.

LARC is so much easier as it takes the user error factor out.

Predicting ovulation is no better than guesswork. I use NC and I can see from my graphs that it can happen at anytime between day 11 and for instance day 17 or even later if your cycles are long. There is no way looking at the graph that you can give an exact day ovulation will happen. You can see the signs of it approaching, HT tests, changes in mucus, sex drive increase, skin suppleness, physical well being, feeling emotional etc. But to say with confidence when the ovulation occurred is only possible AFTER the event, it clearly visible on the graph + the other signs.

NC states quite clearly not to go by its predictions, only the actual day you input the basal temperature. Possible ovulation day is just that, a possibility, so cannot be relied upon. Once the app has detected the temperature shift within a recognisable pattern, it confirms the actual day of ovulation, POST EVENT. Three days post ovulation a woman is not fertile and is heading to her period, so cannot get pregnant.