By “Asking if there is sex after marriage is about as bad as asking if there is life after death.”
What is it with women treating sex as if it is a commodity? A commodity is a good for which there is a demand and for which the value can fluctuate constantly. Women are famous for withholding sex from their husbands in order to get a point across. The general gist is that he does what is asked of him or she withdraws her commodity from the market.
I am not suggesting that a woman “has” to provide sex on demand. If there is an issue and the two are fighting, I can understand that she might not be feeling “intimate”. There are times when she is feeling fatigue, depression, illness, overwhelming draws on her time.
I am also not suggesting that a woman has to have sex every time the man would like to. There can be varying levels of sex drive as well as varying levels of personal health at any given time which can but the two on a different page when it comes to lovemaking.
What I am talking about is the deliberate withdrawal of sex to manipulate the husband. Sex is not a marital commodity to be bartered. It’s a physical expression of our love for one another. To withhold it is to withhold the love as well.
My ex was very good at this game. She would find multiple excuses to avoid intimacy. The problem was my ex was very bull-headed; if she wanted something there were no alternatives. I didn’t agree with most things she said/did and there was constant conflict. The one thing I “needed” from her was sex, so that was the one thing she could control the outcome of any scenario with. She treated sex as a business transaction. She would negotiate for goods and/or services from me in exchange for sex from her.
Eventually it backfired on her:
Sex is so important to some that withholding it when the man has no other option is equivalent to torture. The problem is other than cheating he really has no option, so he has no choice but to “obey”. For those of you that might suggest that it isn’t a big deal and hubby won’t die without sex should keep in mind that YOU won’t suffer without more than one pair of shoes. My ex couldn’t see the big deal at all.
It was simple, I was or wasn’t doing something that was pissing her off. She didn’t see it as cruel or anything. It was designed to motivate me to think. In my opinion it wasn’t so simple; Intentional refusal of sex is a lot like the silent treatment – a passive, childish way of trying to force behavior from the other party .
Lovemaking being an intimate expression of love. This was the first aspect to disappear. I felt if it were so easy for her to not be intimate, it was a direct expression of her lack of love for me. If she could withhold sex, she was in fact withholding emotional commitment.
Sex in its pure physical form is enjoyable and provides a tension release. Masturbation can provide an alternative release, so I switched to self-pleasure so that the withdrawal of the commodity had less effect.
In the long run I ended up having no feelings for her, nor did I “need” her commodity anymore. When eventually I ended up single once more and started dating I was rather disappointed that I had wasted so many years with such a jaded woman.
I have heard many women complain that their husband’s aren’t interested in sex anymore. They claim that it is not they that have lost interest. This may be true, maybe it was never a loss of interest on my exes part. The problem with the manipulation by withdrawal game is eventually the man gets (somewhat) used to not having sex or finds alternatives. When she is ready and willing she wonders why her husband no longer has any interest.
Because my ex was so well-practiced at withholding sex I started to think that she was in fact frigid. Weeks, months went by and there was no interest. If she had no desire for sex eventually I felt I would have to find another woman who did. The start of an affair.
I think that my wife (many women) think that the act of sex really is just a “wham-bam” thing for the man and for some it may be. For me the buildup was always the best part. I would deliberately build sexual tension by fantasizing about the act. So many times everything was going right all day and just before bed she would come up with some excuse to avoid sex. After time (years) I stopped fantasizing, stopped dreaming, stopped anticipating. the anticipation, the tension I created in myself is the same tension that causes me to feel and therefore act romantic. No sex= no tension=no romance. Her next question? “How come you aren’t romantic anymore”? I told her and her response was that, “sex and romance have nothing to do with one another” Not worth the argument anymore, I’ll just jerk-off!
theromanticmisogynist.com 
I hear and see examples of women who do this and it’s hard for me to understand. I’ve always felt sex was a vital need for ME and I’m a female. So it wouldn’t make sense to withold it. Even with my ex husband and even after I’d lost attraction for him I never once turned him down when he wanted sex. The problem was that he hardly ever wanted it, it had to be initiated by ME almost every time, even when we were newlyweds and I stopped trying very often after being rejected. So there ARE cases where it is like that but I still suspect he may be gay.
I had a sister in law who seemed to do stuff like this to her husband though and was always telling me stuff like just tell him no sex unless he does xyz. Of course she didn’t know how things were in my marriage so it made sense to her. She was also a very bossy woman in general but if her husband didn’t do what she wanted she’d threaten no sex and she claimed he wanted it every night. I guess she kept doing it because it worked!
When I was still married, I did this to a certain extent…but I also completely lost my sex drive, too…I knew sex would get me what I wanted from him, but I didn’t have any desire to have sex with him in the first place…in my personal opinion, that’s a sign there’s something wrong…
Once my divorce was final and I began dating again, I realized I have a really active sex drive and VERY strong urges…I’ve made a personal choice about my sex life that almost ensures what happened in my marriage will never happen again, and it’s not for everyone…but, based on my experience, if sex becomes a tool or there’s absolutely no desire, that’s something to pay attention to…and either get out of the relationship or figure out what’s wrong and fix it…I would almost say that sex (or lack thereof) is the first and biggest indicator of problems in a relationship…