It causes untold pain and suffering, and makes life unbearable, and its not very nice for the woman either

If your looking for "natural" birth control google natural family planning. I personaly don't practice it, but know lots of women do, and it (supposedly) works fairly well. It deals with learning exaclty when you are ovulating and are thus most likely to get pregnant vs when you are not and are thus least likely to get pregnat...

Menstruation or 'periods' is the time when the unovulated egg gets torn from the wall of placenta, and comes out through vagina.. So till the date of the 'period' the egg is inside the placenta and if an intercourse is made before the 'period' there is high possibility of ovulation.. And an intercourse just after the period - within seven days from period - its very very low chance of ovulation as it takes atleast seven days for the new egg to travel to placenta.. so in your friends case, the intercourse before the 'period' should have been the cause for pregnancy and not the one after 'period'.. and remember that the sperm can live maximum of five days inside a woman's body..

can satisfaction be acheived in intercourse using birth control things apart from pills?

The short answer is yes.

The thing is, the best sex is unprotected sex during ovulation. Our bodies work in such a way that sex produces children. All of our sexual urges lead us to procreation. Anything we do that gets in the way of that hinders our enjoyment to some degree. But most people find they are satisfied with some form of birth control. All of them have their benefits and their drawbacks, so you just have to make your own decision. Condoms are the easiest. And anything drug-related has a decent chance of having adverse effects on the woman. It's all hormone related, and when you start messing with hormones you never know what might happen.