This exact situation is addressed in Schnarch and I referred to it in a post to Chrome (see here). That post is copied below:
Quote:
Schnarch on p.303 gave me some insight. The woman in the example, Audrey, was complaining about feeling pressured for sex from her husband and she was not going to have sex under those conditions and would only do so when she was ready. She needed the emotional connection first, which meant more time (rather than ask how many men here this applies to, it may be easier to ask who it doesn’t apply to). “Audrey was “using” the system within monogamous sex the same way her mother had used the dependency system in a parent-child relationship. Audrey seemed as heedless to Peter’s plight as Mom had been to hers.” (Audrey’s mother had ignored her as a child and shut her down emotionally.)
Schnarch tells Audrey she backs herself into a corner everytime she refuses to initiate, which makes her frustrated and angry. She is refusing to make a choice in either confronting her own intimacy issues or leaving the marriage. So rather than make such a painful choice, she traps her husband Peter in a corner instead. He will not relent on his desire to have sex. So he must make a decision on whether to wait for her to confront her issues, or whether HE should leave the marriage. He is frustrated and held captive by HER inaction. She has transferred her dilemma onto him.
Audrey gets mad because she feels constantly the focus of the problem, that Peter is always blaming her for their problems. But Audrey’s indecision is in fact a control method to avoid her choice (what Schnarch calls the two-choice dilemma), and therefore draws the focus back to her. Her inability to make a choice traps herself in this blame game. Forcing her to make this choice is “rattling the cage.”
My wife raised this same issue in counseling once, so I threw out Schnarch’s rebuttal. The counselor also agreed with my comment too, so W had to think about it. Now that I think about it, I haven’t heard her say anything about feeling pressured, though things have been better between us.
