HW I would take the whining, complaining, AND a check list - you name it just to "get there" but I can always dream right? I see your point HW. No sex for X years leads to doing drastic things and lowering one's standards (frequency and/or quality of the sex) of what they will accept from a spouse.
The way it works for me, I don't have enough armor plating to repel some of BB's negative attitude about sex and not enough drive to her over come some her resistance for attempts in the horizontal monkey dance more than 1X to 2X a month.
I used to armor up and let the negativity roll of my back to go 3X a month. With a co-operative BB that liked the related activities and the end conclusion, I think the frequency would be 2X or 3X a week.
Lucky for me, BB likes the back, hair, and foot rubs, it stops there. Strange, it never seems to hot for those activities. I am the giver 90+% of the time.
HW, I know you would almost turn yourself inside out at this point. I would too after 3-5 dry years. I don't think I would have lasted more than 3-6 months w/o some serious blow-ups over the no sex situation you experienced.
Of course, your H's affairs would also have been a deal breaker. The way I think is "so you can't have sex with me but you can with someone else."
As a typical man, thinking the W doesn't like sex then reading women posting they don't like sex “with their H” (supposedly a good but boring guy) but they have the hots for some one else. I woke up, something like Choc. I always thought "Don't like sex was about not liking sex and not about not liking a certain person.
This revelation shocked me and now I think some people (W) are thrill seekers. I used to think men had a corner on having the hots for OW and being thrill seekers.
Not my cup of tea for either gender.
Back to dreaming, with the history of scarcity in your life. I can understand your hopefulness.
What I wonder is, why are some people accepting so little for so long, while other people bail because they can't have A Mercedes?
