Having your partner withhold sex in a relationship can be particularly painful. It leaves you feeling unwanted, unworthy, and even repulsive. The question then arises:
Why? What is wrong with me?
In a normal relationship, a candid conversation can often dispel doubts and recreate the intimacy required to restore the sexual relationship.
In the case of narcissists, the landscape is very different. Sex creates vulnerability, and vulnerability is anathema to the narcissist. If you enquire as to what is going on, they might gaslight you or blame you for it. This can leave you frustrated and looking elsewhere for answers.
Some reasons why a narcissist might withhold sex are:
1. Punishment
You have offended or hurt the narcissist, and they want to express their anger in the form of punishment. They want you to feel the pain they feel, and this has a sadistic edge to it. It especially happens with malignant narcissists and narcissists who have a psychopathic overlay to their personality. Quite simply, they want revenge, and they know that withholding sex creates immense hurt in you. They want you to feel undesirable and repulsive. That is the point.
2. Cerebral Narcissism
The narcissist is in a cerebral phase, and sex does not interest them. A narcissist does not necessarily enjoy sex, they only use it to get their partner attached to them, or, in the case of a somatic narcissist, to gain narcissistic supply.
Someone having sex with the narcissist proves that they are attractive and desirable. In the case of the cerebral narcissist, their mind is what gains them narcissistic supply. They would rather you listen to them and validate their ‘superior’ ideas than have sex with them.
3. Security
Once the narcissist is absolutely certain that they have you hooked and you will not leave, they will put a total stop to sex. They can get narcissistic supply from you without it, so why bother?
If they feel you pulling away or directing your attention to people outside of the relationship, or they sense that abandonment is looming, they will re-initiate sex to get you back on the hook. When things settle back to the status quo, the sex will stop again.
4. Madonna/Whore Complex
This mostly plagues narcissistic men, but might also apply to women.
Narcissists carry early trauma from their relationship with their mother (and father, to a lesser degree). When they were going through their libidinal/Oedipal phase at age 5, their emerging sexuality was shamed and rejected.
You see this in the boy who wants to expose himself to the world, or steal his mother from his father. If this is not carefully and lovingly nurtured and redirected by the parents, then the child will begin to associate their libido with pain. Intimacy and sexuality become mutually exclusive.
If the narcissist develops emotions for their partner, then they become unable to be sexual with them. The only way to overcome this is to reduce affection and increase sadism in the sexual relationship. More distance means less vulnerability, which then increases libido.
If you and the narcissist are feeling particularly close and stable for a period, then they will begin to see you as the Madonna; pure and undeserving of being spoiled. Spoiling is a form of treatment only reserved for the ‘whore’. When the Madonna activates in the narcissist’s mind, then their sex drive is effectively switched off.