According to Edward Teach, we assume people want sex. But it gets entangled with giving pleasure, and once a relationship starts keeping score, that entanglement inverts: partners stop giving, hoarding pleasure for themselves to balance the ledger.
The deeper claim is dark: people don’t actually want intimacy, and once sex is part of a relationship more complex than pleasure, they avoid its intimate correlation. They withdraw psychologically, finding pleasure only in solo fantasy, bypassing the needy, vulnerable reality of another person.