"mother nature’s way of natural birth control!! Haha!"
Oh idiocy it takes to compose such a thought.

Taking pills continuously, or one of the kinds that has a period break every three months, doesn't work for everybody. Among other things, spotting and breakthrough bleeding is a common problem. According to their own research, a third of Lo Loestrin users are still experiencing "unscheduled bleeding" a year later:

"Approximately half of the women who use Lo Loestrin Fe have
unscheduled bleeding or spotting in the first months of use, and about one-third of users
continue to have unscheduled bleeding or spotting after one year of use."

I have my doubts about the Pill. Ortho-Novum 777, prescribed by a military doctor (back when I was in the U.S. Navy, in my mid 20s, and sexually active) shot my blood pressure through the roof and caused unwanted weight gain. All this on top of already horrible monthly menstrual periods consisting of heavy bleeding and excruciating body pain all over. I got off the Pill soon afterward, and would caution about side effects. Unfortunately, the majority of military and VA doctors I had in the past didn't care much about finding cures for my diagnosed dysmenorrhea and menorraghia or relieving my extreme pain.
It wasn't until I was in my late 40s that my current amazing gynecologist did a uterine ablation that fixed up my pelvic floor related problems over a 38 year span of total misery.

Lo Loestrin took $80 from me every month and made me more depressed than I've been in my life. I'll take my crampier, heavier, longer periods with the copper IUD than deal with birth control pills again. Everyone is different. I'd rather have my partner just get me off with his hands for a couple days than deal with the side effects of hormonal birth control.

I use the Nuvaring. I leave it for the full cycle instead of removing for the last week and have been happily period free for many moons. That said, is still a hormonal method with attendant downsides.

Dan, I have to disagree with you that two months in is too soon to know if your partner is the love of your life. It's possible to meet the right person and just know. My husband and I met mid life, post divorce, me late 30s, him late 40s, we were married less than a year after we met and that was 6 years ago.

We sometimes argue and sometimes have bad days, we are not perfect people but we love each other and value our relationship. I think part of it is that we both learned a lot about ourselves and about what it takes to make a marriage work from our first marriages. We seem to be in a pattern of falling in love with each other over and over again and I often feel the kind of new relationship energy where I want to spend every minute with him.

At any rate, it is possible to find the right person and just know.

But who got the dog? He didn’t say who got the dog...

@6 Althea
"It's possible to meet the right person and just know."

I wonder if it's possible even before you meet them, say the day before you do, to "just know" you will meet The One /tomorrow/?

(Sorry for the odd reply, Althea, it's just that last month we did a huge thread about "just knowing".)

I miss BiDanFan.

@6 I hear you but I think it's more that you're in the frame of mind to find someone and that person is too. There are people I dated where if I'd met them three years later, we would've been off and running. I think those "we knew on the third date" are more people being in the right frame of mind and meeting someone who works.

@9 curioius2: Where did BiDanFan go? Is she on vacation? So is CMD for a couple of weeks.

For the Lo Lestrin haters, I’m on desogestrel, which has the same effect of no periods for most women, and no appreciable side effects as far as I am aware (apart from sore boobs for the first couple of weeks).

Desogestrel has a reduced risk of the thrombosis that can accompany oestrogen pills: if you get migraines like I do, oestrogen pills are a bad idea. And you don’t have to take it at exactly the same time each day.

It is more expensive than some Pills, but it’s free for me here in the UK. Just wanted to share in case helpful.

@11 auntie grizelda
"Where did BiDanFan go?"

I don't know. Perhaps unrelated, but with her last posts she was doing some self-reflection about assertiveness in comments.

"Is she on vacation?"

Hopefully a great one!

"So is CMD for a couple of weeks."

Ah, thanks, I missed that!

@6 Given that the LW in that letter was significantly younger than you, already divorced at 27, and also described his now-ex as his dream girl, I come down on Dan's side here. You knew what you wanted when you met your husband, this guy seems to still be figuring himself out.

@13 curioius2: Griz, like BiDanFan, has started self-reflecting about her assertiveness in comment threads, too, lately. I may have to avoid political commentaries altogether. I don't know how Dan can stomach it.

Getting to the root cause of pathological vaginal dryness is probably a good thing, but how is "lube" not the quick and obvious solution for immediate problems?

@6: No, it's not possible to know in the absence of decades of information. It's possible to get lucky, and it's possible to commit to work through any disagreements or bad periods, but it's not possible to know. Knowing requires data, of which you don't have enough early on.

BiDanFan is one of my favorite commenters; I hope she's well!

@16 - "how is 'lube' not the quick and obvious solution for immediate problems?"

Imagine someone is very dehydrated and has chapped lips that are painful and cracking. Slathering on ointment is a quick solution to ease discomfort, but that doesn't address the underlying problem. And "less painful and uncomfortable" is generally not the goal of sex, it's pleasure. If a guy's dick was dry and cracking and sticking it in a vagina resulted in pain, would you consider the obvious solution to be to cover his dick in lube every few minutes to make it bearable, or would it be preferable to treat the underlying issue that's causing his dick to be dry and cracked?