A funny conversation with my best friend got me thinking, and I’m genuinely curious about the male perspective. For context, this happened in France. Mentioning this as a few commentators stated how bc obviously has lots of side effects for women, but some things like this seem to be a bit old school mentality in France? She’s in her late 30s, he’s in his mid-40s, they’ve been dating for about three months. He has two children (14 and 11) from a previous relationship, and she’s not sure whether she wants children herself. They’ve been using the pull-out method, and one day he asked if she’d consider going on birth control. She jokingly replied, “Wait… I thought you wanted babies?” He laughed and said, “No, seriously. Can you answer the question?” She explained that she really doesn’t like hormonal birth control because of how it affects her body and hormones, but she’d be perfectly happy to use condoms instead, or even male spermicide if that were an option (she mentioned the spermicide like a joke knowing he wouldn’t go for it.) As soon as condoms entered the conversation, he immediately said, “No, it’s fine,” and dropped the subject. It made me laugh because I’d completely forgotten that I’ve had almost identical conversations in my own life. The interesting thing is that these weren’t careless or selfish men. Quite the opposite. They were intelligent, thoughtful, kind, and generally very responsible people. That’s why I find it so interesting. There seems to be a point where the desire to be responsible about preventing pregnancy meets the reality that the responsibility might involve wearing condoms, and for some men that’s where the conversation ends. I’m not judging it. Condoms obviously feel different, and everyone has their own preferences. I’m just curious about what’s happening psychologically in that moment. From a man’s perspective, what’s the thought process? Is it simply, “I’d rather accept the risk than have sex with a condom”? Were you hoping she’d already preferred hormonal birth control? Or is there another way of looking at it that women might not appreciate? submitted by /u/Salty_Challenge5563
Originally posted by u/Salty_Challenge5563 on r/AskMen