Why Married Men Masturbate (Part 2)

In Part 1, I discussed how rats destined for college learning experiments can be motivated to perform by starving them to just 85% of their normal body weight before an experiment.

Wives unconsciously follow a similar logic when sharing sex with their husbands. By keeping him in a state of “scarcity” regarding sex, she can more easily manipulate him.

And there too, there is “a sweet spot.” After all, if she cuts him too drastically, it increases the risk of him being motivated to get a lover and perhaps divorce as well.

Why do women do this? Because it works. That is, it works in the short term. And that’s the time frame in which the nervous systems were designed to focus.

Now let’s move on to a male perspective: the husband needs sex at a certain rate, but the wife is delivering it more slowly. What should the boy do?

If she hadn’t married, he could send her packing and find a more accommodating friend. But since he was married, he gave up his most important legal right: the right to leave without incurring heavy financial penalties. And that’s especially true if he and his wife already have children.

So my husband is likely to do what people have done since time immemorial when caught in a hierarchy of dominance where they cannot openly rebel without serious consequences:

They become passive-aggressive.

Masturbation is part of a married man’s solution to “make up for the deficit” when a wife is giving out sex less often than he would like. But it can also serve as a form of passive aggression. Provides both benefits simultaneously.

Let’s use an example to illustrate: Suppose my husband’s ideal rate would be to have sex every other day, but his wife will not have sex with him more than every three to four days. Naturally, you will feel frustrated sexually. And depending on how much he ends up having to humiliate himself in an effort to get her to be more accommodating, he will also resent having to humiliate himself. You will feel powerless because you have no power.

He can’t do anything about it directly (since she has the cards, sexually and legally) but he won’t like it. And your resentment will grow over time as the situation repeats itself. He will eat it. You will not be able to solve the problem but you will express your resentments indirectly.

If kept for a long time, he will resort to masturbation … “If she doesn’t, I’ll do it myself!”

That takes the edge off physically. It reduces your feelings of helplessness. And if it allows you to “discover” that you are masturbating, you can also “get even” on some level. She makes him feel inadequate as a man (by not wanting to sleep with him very often) so she returns the favor by making her feel inadequate as a woman (by being even less desirable than “no woman at all”).

If you solve the problem by having an affair on the sidelines, that carries risks. It’s a cheat and for the rest of their time together (assuming she doesn’t divorce him right away) she will never let him forget that he cheated on her.

But masturbation is a “victimless crime” here. It’s not actually cheating (since no one else is involved), so it’s technically not prohibited. But it is still a way to convey disgust and at the same time feign innocence.

That’s one overriding dynamic: When it comes to why married men masturbate, chances are that she rationed sex in an effort to control it and he resists the leash.