I wasn't being accurate. When we were dating I did a lot more teasing etc... AND our sexual R went waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down BEFORE we got married despite that. We even went to see a counselor about it where I was reassured that it was because of a number of "not Karen" issues. Great! So, we had more sex on our honeymoon - initiated by him and me and we came back from the honeymoon and resumed the issues.
I had more sexual confidence then so H's relative LD didn't dampen my spirit quite as much and I still continued to tease etc.... Marriage didn't change it - H's repeated lack of emotional enagagement did. The other thing that changed the foreplay itself was the cycle of dealing with H's high level of sexual discomfort - HE wanted to kind of move things along and get things over with once there was foreplay going on. AND Dom, I was, in fact, the provider of most of the foreplay - I was the initiater of the kisses, the footrubs, the VAST majority of the oral sex, body kissing etc.... I kissed H on the earlobe, the nape of neck. I got out the massage oil and gave him a massage.
No, it isn't at all similar to the guy who doesn't provide all the bells and whistles and in the meantime just expects sex after the dating is over. That guy usually isn't complimenting his W, taking emotional risks in sharing things with her, hasn't verbalized sh*t to her about his emotional interior. He has merely gotten lazy about the bells and whistles and expects to say, "Hey honey, let's do it" and get an enthusiastic response.
What I have done is to detach myself from a bad pattern of relating. I have stayed engaged in the relationship on every level except I have stopped chasing someone who was constantly running the other direction while hoping (stupidly not in a calculating way) that MAYBE he might turn around and see why I stopped or failing that, might acknowledge that he was running.
Have you read Passionate Marriage? This is about differentiation. Passionate Marriage asks the question of the relentlessly HD spouse - "Why do you want sex so badly with someone who clearly doesn't want it? What is it about YOU that makes that kind of interaction okay?" Well, the answer is fusion. In emotionally fused relating we derive our own okayness from our spouses response to us instead of from ourselves. Just because I'm not initiating with my H doesn't mean I don't want sex. If I don't initiate with my H just to "prove a point" or to get him to react a certain way - that is fusion and it is a game as you have suggested. That isn't what I'm doing (and Lou is right it is somewhat self protective). However, this is also the unfused me who is saying "I am attractive and sexy and I like sex and mostly I like sex with persons who like sex with me. So, let me know. If you are game I am." In this way I quit throwing myself up against a brick wall. I treat myself like a person of sexual worth. And I leave room for him to do the same. If he cares about our sex life then he has two choices to resolve the dilemma he can (a)initiate or (b)ask me why I'm not. He hasn't done either and while I'm not ok with that I am ok with my self where I used to not be ok during our many and sundry sexual droughts. I'm not trying to be right I'm trying to be happy and to let him find his happiness too.
