In Part 1, I discussed how rats intended for university learning experiments can be motivated to perform by starving them to only 85% of their normal body weight prior to an experiment.
Wives subconsciously follow similar logic when they dole out sex to their husbands.
By keeping him in a state of "scarcity" regarding sex, she can manipulate him more easily.
And there also, there's "a sweet spot".
After all, if she cuts him back too drastically, she raises the risk that he'll be motivated to get a mistress and perhaps a 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 that nervous systems were designed to focus on.
Now let's shift over to a male perspective: hubby needs sex at a certain rate but the wife is doling it out more slowly.
What's the guy to do? If he hadn't married, he could send her packing and look for a more accommodating girl friend.
But since he is married, he's signed away his most important legal right: the right to walk away without incurring heavy financial penalties.
And that's especially true if he and his wife have children already.
So hubby is likely to do what people have done from time immemorial when caught up in a dominance hierarchy in which they can't rebel openly without severe consequences: They become passive-aggressive.
Masturbation is partly the solution for a married man to "make up the shortfall" when a wife is doling sex out less frequently than he'd like it.
But it also can serve as a form of passive-aggression.
It provides both benefits simultaneously.
Let's use an example to illustrate: suppose that hubby's ideal rate would be to have sex every other day but that his wife will have sex with him no more often than every third or fourth day.
Naturally he'll become sexually frustrated.
And depending on how much he ends up having to grovel in an effort to get her to be more accommodating, he'll also be resentful about having had to grovel.
He'll feel powerless because he is powerless.
He can't do anything about it directly (as she holds the cards, sexually and legally) but he won't like it.
And his resentment will grow over time as the situation repeats itself.
It will eat at him.
He won't be able to solve the problem but he'll express his resentments indirectly.
If it keeps up for long, he'll turn to masturbation...
"If she won't do it, I'll do it myself!" That takes the edge off physically.
It reduces his feelings of powerlessness.
And if he lets her "discover" that he masturbates, he can also "get even" at some level.
She makes him feel inadequate as a man (by not wanting to sleep with him very often) so he returns the favor by making her feel inadequate as a woman (for being even less desirable than "no woman at all").
If he solves the problem by having an affair on the side, that carries risks.
It's cheating and for the rest of their time together (assuming she doesn't divorce him immediately) she'll never let him forget that he cheated on her.
But masturbation is a "victimless crime" here.
It isn't actually cheating (since no one else is involved) so it's not technically prohibited.
But it's still a way to convey displeasure and at the same time feign innocence.
That's a prime dynamic: when it comes to why married men masturbate, there's a good chance that she's rationing sex in an effort to control him and he's resisting the leash.