Is there any other mortal sin where person after person says you just need to listen to someone committing a sin?

Maybe this is part of the problem.  Maybe this is why so many Catholics do not understand the seriousness of denying the marriage debt.

For the record, I am a woman.  Sure I have feelings and emotions.  But I also care about understanding Church teaching and avoiding sin.  I do not want to be "protected" from Church teaching because it could hurt my feelings.  I want to know the truth.

There seems to be an idea that letting women know Church teaching on the marriage debt is the same as being demanding and insensitive.  It isn't.  Helping one's spouse to get to heaven is a major duty of spouses.  One cannot do this while avoiding telling the truth.

Women are emotional.  It's true.  Husbands may not like this and our priests may not understand this, but you can't just say to us "You owe me my debt."  This is a sure way to grow bitterness in a woman's heart.  No matter how true it is that as spouses we owe each other our marriage debt, this doesn't really mean much at midnight when she has to get up at 5 to start her days work.

What you're trying to say is that women are MORE emotional than men.  Men have emotions also.  But here's the newsflash.  Love is not an emotion or an emotional state.  Love, for human beings, involves primarily the intellect and the will ... not subject to the vicissitudes of emotions.  Love is not primarily emotion.  Women in particular have a difficult time with this concept.  Emotions go up and down due to various physiological factors ... most notably hormones.  In addition, Catholics are expected to act out of SUPERNATURAL love, aka charity.

Consequently, just because a woman doesn't FEEL like it, she is not dispensed from meeting her obligations out of love and supernatural charity.  And she should be generous in doing so.  If she turns "bitter" when being reminded of her obligation in justice and charity to her husband, then she is not in a good place either with God or with her husband.  She completely lacks GENEROSITY in her charity and love and seeks only the self-gratification of emotion.

You see, the saints also went through this in the spiritual life.  God allowed them to be deprived of the emotional gratification they received from loving Him so that they could learn to love Him more and more selflessly ... and not just because it pleased them.  Thus they learned how to seek not their own personal gratification but God Himself for His sake, because it pleases HIM, rather than themselves.  These are the so-called "dark nights" of the spiritual life.

So it's not about man vs. woman but about human beings, especially Catholics, vs. animals.

Nor is this kind of love "cold", but often after these saints passed through these dark nights, the love they found on the other side was incredibly ardent and like burning fire.

Otherwise, you leave "love" to the vicissitudes of your own personal gratification.

Who cares whether it's midnight or 5 AM?  In fact, sometimes God calls upon us to meet our obligations even if it entails an almost heroic exertion of will.

In the case of my relationship with my wife, I am a morning person and am much more alert in the morning.  She on the other hand can't wake up in the morning but is wide awake at night.  But we often accommodate one another in the "opposite" time window when we don't necessarily "feel" like it.  We do it out of generosity towards one another, and that's a deeper love than doing it because it pleases us.  If we only do it to please ourselves, we just love ourselves and not our spouse.

And that's the entire journey of our lives.  Do we seek primarily ourselves or primarily others, and God above all things.

So if this causes "bitterness", then you need to re-evaluated your relationship with God.

And this holds for all our other emotions as well.  If I'm feeling grumpy or tired, this does not permit me to treat others badly as a result.  Men often joke about the women who treat their family like garbage because of their PMS.  Again, newsflash.  These physiological and emotional states do not give you license to act this way.  Your obligations of charity do not cease.  Yes, the guilt might be mitigated, but the obligations remain.  Even if you're not in the best of spirits, you can still TREAT people kindly and with respect ... through an exertion of your will.  Yes, for a woman, that might entail an almost heroic exertion during times like that.  But God calls you to that, and obliges it.  Similarly, for men, sometimes they can get irritated and have temper issues (also due to hormones) ... but that too does not give them license to treat others badly.  Men would are denounced as bullies if they act like this, but we're supposed to chuckle when women do the same.  Do you like being treated like amusing little children who can't control themselves or do you want to be held to the same spiritually-virile standards as men?  You keep trying to fool yourselves that various emotional states justify certain behaviors.

With that said, husbands should (and must) show affection towards their wives, should listen to them, etc. -- EVEN WHEN THEY DON'T FEEL LIKE IT.  This cuts both ways.  St. Paul (aka the Holy Spirit through him):  "Husbands, love your wives."

And nothing engenders affection (and true love) in someone more than self-sacrifice.  When I see my wife sacrificing something she wants (whether it's rest or self-gratification) for my sake, it almost forces the affection out of me.  I can't even help it.  Try it some time.  Only the coldest of male hearts will not respond to true generosity of this kind.  On the other hand, when women act like selfish little gratification-seeking babies, who need to be constantly coddled and patronized, constantly seeking attention, then men tend to withhold precisely what these women are seeking ... their love an affection.

There is no reason to assume that a husband has done anything wrong to cause this problem.  We live in a culture that teaches women that we should engage in the marital act when we are "in the mood" and that a husband has no right to expect it.  It is very common for women to believe that it is a favour that the husband has to earn.

Even traditional Catholics can be affected by our surrounding culture, especially by an idea as wide-spread as this one.  I suspect that this is the most common reason for this sort of problem.  The first step in dealing with it is making sure that the husband and wife understand Church teaching about marriage.

I am not OP btw.

Good luck trying to get out of a woman the reason for anything.

I've tried having these "conversations" with my wife, all it ends up being it a huge blame fest on her part about everything I do or do not do perfectly according to her. Communication is important, but for problems such as these, communication is pretty much useless IMO. Asking her "why won't you have sex with me" will just be a bitchy litany of her blaming you for everything. Anytime you try to point out something she is doing wrong, she will blame you for it or deny she is doing it at all. Communication about sex does not work. I repeat. Does not work.

I stopped having these conversations once she said "You didn't lock the door when you left for work this morning" and another "You forgot to take out the trash"

Really? I mean... wow.

I realized then that most women are incapable of having a rational discussion without blaming their husbands for all their problems.

Sure, there is a way in which one may "communicate" with men; but it requires previous, methodical learning, and careful planning beforehand. Just being open and speak your mind as you would with your best friend do not work and it is a recipe for disaster.

Both this observation and the one from the previous poster all depend on the person involved.  I am a man and want to know the truth and crave more than my wife does to speak our minds to one another as we would with a best friend.  I have used exactly that expression.  I told her that, more than anything else, I want to be best friends with her.  I have tried pouring everything out to her, and it just ends up being a monologue.  She barely says 2 words in response.  And it's all I can do to pry anything out of her about how she's feeling, what she's thinking, etc.  I told her that she could even tell me that she can't stand the sight of me and I would still love her just the same and would be moved that she would feel comfortable enough with me to share the thought.  But she doesn't want to open up.

So ...

the point is that you are generalizing about men and women, and so was the previous poster.  It depends on the PERSON and not the gender.  Genders may create certain tendencies in one direction or the other, but that's about it.

I don't know if that helps at all but I offer it anyway just in case.

Thank you.  I guess I was talking more about being able to speak about anything ... as if you would to a friend.  Yes, of course, being husband and wife involves much more than that, but, to me, if that element isn't there (the best language I can find for which is "friendship"), then it's hard for the rest to be there.  In other words, I would never REDUCE the husband-wife relationship to one of friendship alone, but that friendship has to be there too, as a base.  You know, the kind of relationship where you can reveal anything without being looked down judgmentally ... the same way that one might talk to God.

Great post, Mr 32yo! Your wife is blessed!