Trying to figure it out.. sex life crash!

So me and my wife have been married for about a year and have been living together for about 3 of our 4 years together. I'm trying to figure out what may be going on with us in the sex department of our relationship.. I can't say we have a bad relationship because we both work, we both pull our weight, and it's not like we don't enjoy our time together because we do, we really get along great.... until sex comes up and it use to not be that way.. I know most will argue but I'm 99.9% positive it's not a cheating issue either.. faithfulness isn't an issue on either one of our sides with this..

A little backstory: early in our relationship I purposely resisted being tempted in wild sex even though making out had potential to get hot and heavy quick i simply did that because I really liked her and didn't want to build a relationship off of sex and miss something or love the relationship for the wrong reasons.. and honestly I'm glad I did and as things progressed alot of it was driven my her and not as much me as to how fast that moved.. in the beginning things were hot and great and spontaneous. (Don't think I'm expecting the early stages of dating sex back) but it wasn't bad at all.. we were totally happy and loved it.. as time went on we moved in together and the stresses of life also joined us we went through alot of stressful things like her finishing school to be teacher, me taking 2 big job leaps, and a couple deaths in the family which didn't kill our sex life but it did slow it down.. we handled the everyday life and stresses of her finishing school, jer first job, and planning a wedding and were married almost a year ago today.. since we were married working alot could possibly be said but we still have alot of good "us" time. She had put on a little extra weight during all of that stressful time and was a bit depressed about it but she wasn't even big to me but never could convince her otherwise.. she always felt she wasn't sexy or pretty and said she was a cow and why would I want her but I always stayed true to me and told her how much I liked her just the way she was (I really did but let me just say it didn't help) we still had sex here and there but it definitely slowed down a little more and often times a couple drinks to catch that "buzz" would be the leading cause of her even wanting to have sex at all.. since then her and myself as well have lost weight, her self esteem went back up, she is happier, work is good, not alot of stress, really things are probably about as good as they could be.. life is good..... except sex didn't change.. it got worse.. we actually had a few fights over "all you want is sex" and "why can't you just love on me without it being sexual" (believe me or not I actually have always been a loving guy without it leading to sex) I mean yea I won't lie it probably seems I am trying harder to make it happen but if I wasn't than neither of us would be.. we are at the point that unless she has a couple drinks we never have sex.. if she thinks touching goes to far she throws my arm or hand off of her, if I lay down to cuddle and I try to simply love on her (No intentions) she just gets up and walks away.. she swears nothing is wrong she just don't want too, like I say before faithfulness isn't my worry at all.. it's just when I figured all the frustrations that made things go downhill ended and things got better it would get better.. but it didn't! It definitely got worse.. I don't want to fight about it, but trying to simply talk about she gets hostile over it.. I just don't really know how to address it anymore but it has started to make me feel unwanted and undesirable.. and I just don't get it.. any ideas?? Sorry it was so long just wanted to try and cover all angles because I am struggling..

You need to step up the romance and do stuff like when you were dating. You're in a rut. Go away for a weekend. Go on dates. Plan fun stuff for your free time. Stop talking about sex. It sounds like she's angry.

You say you are affectionate and do things such as cuddling without any attempt whatsoever to lead it to sex?

Yet she sees if differently? If you were entirely honest would you say that you are affectionate but just maybe slip in the slightest clue that you would escalate it if she was interested?

I ask this because we women know the difference.

I used to be somewhat similar this way with my ex husband. He couldn't much less hold my hand unless there was an agenda tied to it.

If he were here he'd protest otherwise, but that wasn't my experience. What he didn't realize is that if he could just cuddled with me or snuggled on the couch to watch tv, without subtly brushing my body parts to take my temperature, he would have probably gotten a lot more sex that he did. He just couldn't separate the two.

I'm sorry to hear about your struggles. I definitely know the feeling of decreased libido and the sparks of romance being harder to rekindle, but it must be very frustrating to have your wife accuse you of wanting too much sex and refuse you if you truly are being faithful to each other and both putting work into the relationship. Sex was designed to be an essential part of marriage, and it's definitely fair of you to address it.

It sounds possible to me that a large part of this could be due to your wife's lack of self-confidence over her image, which definitely has affected my own libido in the past. It would probably be wise for her to go to some type of counseling to work this out, but judging by how you have described her attitude, that may be quite difficult to get her to do. Do you think she'd be open to the idea of marriage therapy or couples counseling (down the road, if not now?) It's often easier for people to go if they have someone with them. I would also agree with the first poster in that one of your wisest options may be to increase your romantic and gentlemanly gestures without making it sexual, in order to potentially warm her up to you again. Can you think of any meaningful gifts you can get her? Anywhere special you can take her? Do you ever cook fancy meals for her? These things tend to win my wife's heart over a lot, and the feeling is often mutual when she does it for me. Hoping and praying things will improve.