I recently had a chat with a friend who shared that she and her husband had a disagreement. I won’t get into the details, but I’ll say this: I clearly sided with her. I felt her husband should be the one to give in, to see reason, to compromise.
Then she said something that literally took my breath away. With a knowing smile, she added:
“I told him I wouldn’t sleep with him until this was resolved.”
I understood what she wanted to achieve. Emotionally, I got that she was angry, disappointed, and wanted to be taken seriously. Still, hearing her say it, I felt something had gone very wrong. Not because a woman "owes" sex to her partner—there’s no such thing.
But because this wasn’t about her lacking desire, feeling unsafe, or needing time to rebuild trust to enjoy closeness again. That wasn’t her issue, and as she explained, it wasn’t why she decided to withhold sex. It was because she turned sex into a tool. A punishment. A form of blackmail.
It’s crucial to make a clear distinction. It’s perfectly normal for tension to build between two people, where one or both feel they can’t or don’t want to be intimate right now.
Intimacy is trust, connection, vulnerability. When these are hurt, it’s natural for the body to close off.
When someone says no for emotional reasons, it’s not manipulation—it’s self-care. This deserves not just acceptance but respect.
Sex as a Tool for Blackmail
But when withholding sex isn’t about inner need, but a conscious tool—“you’ll get me only if you do what I want”—a toxic dynamic creeps in. Sex stops being a shared joy or connection and becomes a bargaining chip. A reward or punishment.
Unspoken, it sends the message: sex isn’t important to us. We’re not the ones desiring it. We just "give" it—to the other person. As if women weren’t sexual beings. As if desire, pleasure, and bodily joy were only men’s privilege, and we merely ration, grant, or withhold it.
This mindset is alarmingly familiar. It’s the same old logic that for centuries said: a woman’s body is currency. Her only value and power in the world.
Is Sex Just a Gift Women Give Men?
In marriage or relationships, sex is seen as something owed for “good behavior,” and only owed to the man. Women at best allow it, tolerate it, or worse, endure it. We like to think we’ve moved past this, but when sex becomes a transactional tool, we’re stepping back into a dark, dusty past.
The sexual revolution wasn’t just about “freer” sex. It was about sex being a shared space between equals. A place where everyone has desires, needs, boundaries, and joy. Where it’s not a service, but a meeting.
When we act like sex only matters to men, we rob ourselves of the right to desire. And when we use our bodies as weapons, we unintentionally turn ourselves into commodities. There’s no softer way to say it: in those moments, we are truly selling ourselves short.
