Withholding sex to "punish" your husband when things are not going great is cruel but more than anything is hurts you in the end. Did it ever occur to you that sex has a healing and unifying power? Withholding is usually about control and a severe lack of communication skills. Withholding sex can be an expression of hostility, or of teaching him a lesson. So you go ahead and show your spouse who is the “boss”, then what? You have now tainted the most loving act in the world into a weapon???I understand that if your partner has mistreated you the last thing you want to do is jump in the sack. But please… then instead go about resolving things instead of playing some passive aggressive game where you are manipulative. What you do is create a dynamic where SEX becomes a tool instead of a gift. Your husband will learn to resent you and the power that comes with your physical affection, you literally aid in the process of reducing yourself into an object instead of a person.
Think of it from a different perspective. My friend’s father uses money in the same way. He will help his children financially but then uses it to obligate and guilt them later. He retroactively diminishes his fiscal gifts by holding it over his children’s heads. If they don’t do what he wants to appease him in any way, he will bring up his financial gifts as weapons. What has happened over the years is that the kids see him as an ATM that they resent. They want his money but not him. He created in them the very resistance he has wanted to avoid. He feels used, and rightfully so, but think about the part he played in that destructive exchange.
When wives do this with physical intimacy it usually proves to be a foolish move. When we are offended, we are looking into the other person’s behavior for ways to justify our own wrong doing. It really never plays out as we hope and it is just poor form.
