Abstainers and Moderators in NFP

One of the concepts I’ve been wrestling with lately is how to assist couples who find the abstinence of NFP to be an impediment to their relationship. It’s no great secret that married people want to have sex with each other. And it’s a common criticism that NFP methods are a bad form of family planning because they rely on abstinence– which, by the way, is not very “natural.” I hear and understand and even appreciate these criticisms, because they challenge us in the NFP world to be honest with ourselves and with our clients. Without being heavy-handed about it, I try to prepare my engaged clients for the fact that abstinence within marriage can be harder than abstinence prior to marriage. If they choose to abstain from sex before marriage, they have effectively drawn an invisible barrier which they both promise not to cross, or to even approach too closely. But within marriage, this dynamic shifts– so I coach my couples that they will need to be intentional about communicating with one another early on in their marriage, as they discover new things about how they relate to each other sexually, and where those shifting boundaries may now be. 

So I was struck recently when I heard a few nutritionists talking about the way they tailor diet recommendations to clients based on whether the client is an “abstainer” or a “moderator.” Apparently, the idea is not new. It has been around for more than a decade and was made popular by Gretchen Rubin, the author of multiple New York Times bestsellers including The Happiness Project. Gretchen explains the two traits through a simple questionnaire: 

You’re a moderator if you…

• find that occasional indulgence heightens your pleasure–and strengthens your resolve
• get panicky at the thought of “never” getting or doing something

You’re an abstainer if you…

• have trouble stopping something once you’ve started
• aren’t tempted by things that you’ve decided are off-limits

Is it possible that these two categories could help couples navigate times of abstinence while using NFP? My experience as an instructor suggests that this might sometimes be a very valuable key for easing abstinence tensions for couples.

Take, for example, a couple whom I will call Kelsey and Keith.*  

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