3 days ago
Ask Rachel: My partner is refusing to have sex with me until I've bought her a present
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Dear Rachel,
My partner and I have been together for nearly five years and we moved in together about 18 months ago. We have enjoyed some good times, and our sex life would probably be considered 'normal', whatever that means. However, since we have been living together, she has started to limit the amount of sex she allows me, where physical contact is regulated and directly proportional to the gifts and lifestyle I afford her.
I recently bought her an electric car and, once promised, I noticed that she cut back drastically on what we normally enjoyed, until it stopped altogether. Once she had the keys in her hand, she 'rewarded' me with sex. It has reached the point where she no longer makes excuses, she just openly asks for gifts and then begins to tease and deny me until she gets what she wants.
I have spoken to her about the matter, but she treats it as some sort of game, rather than considering it a 'problem' as such. She told me that every relationship needs a spark to keep it alive, and that I need to work hard to keep her and maintain what we enjoy – and not assume it will always be the same if I stop trying or paying her attention.
Parts of her argument make sense and I find myself complying, but a close friend has advised me to walk away as I am being used. Can you give me an impartial opinion please?
– Anon
Dear Anon,
What an interesting letter, touching on so many under-explored aspects of male-female relations, from Pretty Woman (rich, older white knight in the gorge shape of Richard Gere saves lady of the night) to Indecent Proposal (gorge billionaire Robert Redford tries and eventually succeeds to bag a night with Woody Harrelson's wife for a million dollars), and so many more. These movies play on the latent transactional basis of so many relationships. Women trade their dewy youth and loamy beauty for power, status, security and money. One of my favourite jokes around the commercial (as opposed to emotional) exchange that underpins so many of these asymmetric relationships goes, 'Today's maths problem: if Sadie is 28 and Sam is 72, how much money does Sam have?'
There is no doubt that women have always had to use sex and their physical allure simply in order to survive, and that exchange continues to this day. Their looks – and therefore their youth – could be their only capital, as the saying 'your face is your fortune, my pretty maid' reminds us. I have often observed that extremely wealthy men are not… lookers. They're often toad-like, spectrumy oddballs (like Elon Musk) and yet they have no obvious problem attracting a series of identical trophy wives to separate them from half their worldly goods when the marriage fails and they are on the hunt for a younger replacement.
Which brings us to you and your girlfriend. I have to say – as someone who hates asking for anything, and has never asked for money or presents even once in my whole life – I find her attitude foreign, unfeminist and freakish, but not completely unfathomable. She appears to regard going to bed with you like a sex worker turning a trick, and no wonder you find it objectionable. It's humiliating and expensive, and also, she doesn't appear to know you well enough to understand, or to try to care, why you might be so offended by her nakedly mercantile attitude to what should be a free and generous exchange of tender intimacies, complete with murmured endearments. She is not interested in sweet nothings and providing the girlfriend experience; she's turning your sex life into a bizarre game in which she holds all the cards, doling out sex like Good Boy Choc Drops as a reward for when you've done what she wants, which is buy her stuff.
Most people, I think, will share my dusty attitude to this, but the therapist Sophie Laybourne (find her at points out that there may be some method to this apparent madness.
'Is this naked exploitation or a way of keeping things sexy?' she wonders. 'As much as it's tempting to disapprove, she won't be the first woman who gets turned on by being bought things. And some men, believe it or not, get turned on by doing the buying.'
Here we go then.
'I've treated ' sugar daddies ' who hook up with Instagram models via dedicated agencies – 'daddies' are means-tested before they're allowed on the books – and they like nothing better than to pick up the bills. Sometimes they don't even want sex,' Laybourne tells me, explaining they get pleasure from spending money on someone.
'Obviously this antediluvian relational-sexual scenario is not one likely to thrill feminists. But as we've noted before in this column, what turns people on is remarkably hard to legislate for,' says Laybourne. She points out that even in 2025 women get turned on by money and power – she reminds me of a wife who would shut up shop until her husband pulled off a megabucks deal worth millions – and it's still standard for men to pick up the bill on a first date.
Laybourne says even avowed feminists get the ick if the man doesn't pick up the bill on a first – or perhaps any – date (again, I think that's old-fashioned). 'I had a boyfriend who split every bill, no matter how tiny, and it was a totalturn off and deal-breaker,' Laybourne continues. My impartial opinion and Laybourne's professional one meet somewhere here. You lost me, to be honest, at 'I recently bought her an electric car.' If you break down your sex life with your girlfriend, it is based on a barter economy whereby you expend large sums of cash for access to her body. Most relationships involve a bit of give and take but not quite as baldly as your arrangement.
'It doesn't sound like your reader is turned on by this, so he and his girlfriend are not a good fit,' Laybourne concludes.
I agree. Oh, and I asked a couple of blokes at random what they thought of your letter and they were both horrified. 'Ditch her and move on,' said one. 'A lot of women are doing that and not making it explicit,' said the other, in a more nuanced reaction.
One final thought before you do 'ditch her', though. Do you think there is a faint chance that your girlfriend does find this transactional arrangement 'hot' and is dangling sex in exchange for presents as a way of upping the ante when it comes to your bedroom activity? You say your sex life is ''normal', whatever that means'. Maybe you should entertain the possibility that your materialistic and acquisitive partner is trying 'to elevate' – as Meghan Markle might say as she sprinkles flower petals onto plain old scrambled eggs – your sex life into something more interesting and appetising. Eliminate that remote possibility before you give her the order of the boot.
