it sounds like she really just wasn't in the mood until she had some time to wind down a bit.

Bullshit she was.

And even if she was, were he awake and available it would have been some different excuse.

If you stayed up with her and actually spent some quality time with her instead of trying to do things for her in hopes of sex as a payment you may have gotten laid.

Now you're dangling false hope in front of OP just like his wife.

Don't you see? It was a test. He failed. It was manipulation. she succeeded. She rebuffed and rebuffed and manipulated him into becoming her servant for the night.

He got needier and needier as he imagined getting closer and closer to an end he desired. She cared less and less because of his demonstrated weakness, and by the time he was asleep, suddenly all the practical reality of having a sexually intimate exchange with him disappeared.

I highly doubt she was actually "in the mood" after unwinding, but what did it matter? He already fell into this I-do-choreplay-I-get-sex pattern of misplaced expectation, and she fell into the I-can-get-all-the-positive-attention-I-need-without-actually-being-emotionally-or-sexually-available pattern of control and domination of the relationship ... and the sexlessness continues.

You can't run around chasing that shit. She will always win.

He tried to control her by "getting her in the mood" with this ridiculous backbending sniveling approach to "get her" out of her foul mood (and into a more amorous one) when he should have just backed off when she treated him so poorly.

It's not a tit-for-tat thing. It's just that there is no sense barking up that tree at all.

This is such a perfect example of the dynamic in a lot of DBs. There's a lot to be learned by this exchange.