For those who are married,
If you have made the decision that right now is not a good time to welcome another baby, then it does mean abstinence.
We’ve looked at those charting apps for fertility awareness and seen the advice to use a barrier method during the fertile time. There’s a problem with that! The only times the barrier methods fail are during the fertile time – so that kind of advice is really lacking.
What is meant by abstinence means truly finding other ways to love your spouse other than through love-making. I think back to when we were first falling in love, those long conversations, long walks, doing projects or some kind of service together…. Those were the things that made our love blossom. It can be easy to get into a pattern of using love-making as the only way to say I love you. Using Natural Family Planning has helped us to stay romantic because we have avoided that trap. It isn’t always easy to abstain, but it is worth it.
And for those of you not yet married, abstaining until your wedding would be the best preparation for marriage. I encourage you to support each other in living up to your convictions.