sex or sleep?

[Baltoman]

The problem is you have a situation where if you have sex you win and if you don't she wins. Nobody likes to lose. The only way to break this pattern is to take away her "victory". Look at Hairdog. He imposed a moratorium on physical affection because he needed to take back control and not let his W dictate his mood. She seems to have responded by being more attracted to him.

i have tried it a thousand times, and it just doesn't feel right. then i get all these mixed signals from her: she calls me honey,and is affectionate but there is no end result

What you need to do IMHO (and I am in no way suggesting it is an easy thing) is to stop looking for an end result. Be a cat, not a dog. A dog sees master come in and bounds up wagging his tail looking expectantly at master pleading "pay attention to me!!!". A cat comes and goes at his discretion. When he wants affection, he'll come up and give it but if someone walks in the room, he may just look over with an "I too busy laying in the sun to bother with you" attitude. When you expect the end result, you keep score. She feels you keeping score and then even her attempts to be affectionate feel like they have an undercurrent of pressure associated with them.

there just isn't enough sex in my life to just shrug her refusal away and just say, ok no problem. and telling her that i was going to be great won't do anything.

It isn't what is said, it is the attitude. Nobody says it isn't a problem. What I am saying is that showing hurt and resentment is not working and will most likely never work. You say there isn't enough sex in your life, right? Are you prepared to get grudging, duty sex once a month for the rest of your M? You are protecting a bad situation for fear of making it worse. What if someone suggested that you have to go 6 months without sex but after that the sex life will be much better than the once a month duty sex? Unless I had six months to live, I'd call that a bargain. I'm not suggesting that is what needs to be done. I am suggesting that you need to shake up the power structure of your M a bit before things could change.