Let’s say you need a kidney, and I agree to donate one to you. As long as the kidney is still in my body, I can do whatever I want, and you have no say. I can cheat on any pre-transplant diet I am supposed to be following; I can smoke pot; I can take risks, like driving 85mph on the highway. I can skip pre-transplant medication I may be on to prevent kidney stones. I can also change my mind and keep the kidney, or I can donate it to someone else.
However, once it is in your body, I no longer have any say whatsoever in what happens to it: you skip your anti-rejection meds? not my business. Don’t treat your diabetes properly? not my business. Gain 40lbs now that you are off your “renal disease diet”? not my business.
During whatever (brief) time it is in no one’s body, I believe it belongs to the National Registry of Organ Donors, but I could be mistaken; it might belong to the hospital where the surgery is taking place. They may be contractually obligated to do certain things with it, and might be sued if they don’t, but the point is, it does not belong to me.
The transition is quite abrupt. Arteries are clamped, some connective tissue is severed, then the arteries are severed, and as soon as the last one is cut, bam it does not belong to me. A second earlier, it did, then suddenly, it did not.
Back when I was in alt.atheism, one fanatical Catholic stated that everyone knew sex on birth control was less satisfying than sex off birth control.
Everyone else - atheist or theist - said, not quite and laughed at him.
? ? Why “least satisfying”? Fertility-awareness or “rhythm” contraception methods are just selectively timed abstinence.
In such a system, the sex itself is just like any other unprotected sex. It has nothing to do with avoiding ejaculation during intercourse, for example.
I’d think you’d be worried that you were making a mistake, and would wind up pregnant. We’ve never used this method, but when we were trying to get pregnant there seemed to be an element of scheduling involved. Now my wife did research on reproductive physiology in grad school, and might have been overthinking it. But considering how quickly she got pregnant when we started trying, we were right in worrying.
She said that after I got a vasectomy the experience improved for her due to lack of worry.
There’s more to satisfaction than just the mechanics.
Sure, almost any form of contraception can fail, and there’s always some potential worry about that for couples who don’t want to get pregnant. As you note, couples who use other methods of birth control can also find that worrying about unintended pregnancy diminishes their satisfaction.
But I don’t know that NFP (natural fertility planning, “rhythm”) users worry more than the average. I’ve never done NFP-only contraception but have done fertility awareness tracking, and depending on what data you collect and how predictable your cycles are it can actually be more reassuring to know more about what’s going on.
I know one or two Catholic couples who’ve been NFP-only, with a couple planned pregnancies, so it’s possible to practice it for years without making a mistake. Of course, there are also zillions of NFP practitioners who got pregnant unintentionally, so MMV.
Well, that would certainly be the least satisfying to ME. I used fertility awareness when we were trying to conceive. I was aware when I was fertile – men looked hotter, and I was hornier. It wasn’t at all subtle. I know that not all women can tell when they are fertile, but I could, with excellent accuracy. And having sex only when I wasn’t fertile would have been frustrating as hell.
This site https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/17900-rhythm-method
gives a success rate of 76% for the rhythm method version 91% for the pill.
Sure any method can fail, but some fail more than others. And women in my family have anything but regular cycles.
But we have a pretty much 100% effective birth control method - old age. And if that fails the money we could make from The National Enquirer would more than compensate us.
“Christians are against abortions, and they’re against homosexuals. Well who has less abortions than homosexuals? Here is an entire class of people guaranteed never to have an abortion! You’d think they’d make natural allies."
“Progressive modern America is abandoning the definitions of man=adult male human and woman=adult female human, therefore allowing there to be male women and female men.” - Darren-Garrison