There have been many mentions here of how a wife was expected to not refuse her husband sex, as her body belonged to him. However the biblical scriptures which are the basis for that law also mention the husband's body belonging to the wife. So I'm wondering, if the shoe is on the other foot and it's the husband who is refusing the wife, what is she expected to do?
There’s a lot that can be said about marriage in Tudor times, which looked different depending on what social class you belonged to. My initial response is thinking through you, as a wife dissatisfied with the lack of physical attention, could argue your way out of a marriage if it was never consummated; the most famous example from your timeframe is from King Henry VIII, who used it to annul his marriage to Anne of Cleves.
but wait! Tudor was a Christian time (albeit changing denomination loyalties)! Clearly a wife needs to be married to enjoy her wifely duties, no?
Technically yes, but in reality such stark rules regarding sex (ie it’s only ever done after marriage) were ignored to a high degree. This time in England saw countless shotgun weddings, with estimates placing one in three brides as pregnant by Elizabethan times. The ladies enjoyed sex quite a bit and this was no secret — when the 52 year old king of France married a teenager, and then passed away a mere three months into the marriage, sympathies laid with him, for she must have worn him out in the bedroom for his death to come a-knocking.
If a wife wants to know her options for fulfilling her sexual appetites (besides, of course, extramarital affairs) that part of the good book you bring up wouldn’t have helped her much. Women’s rights in Tudor England were inferior to a man’s so that part of the Bible verse was generally ignored, a pastime most Christians have indulged in throughout recorded history. Yet Tudor England did allow for the nuclear option of divorce in some narrow circumstances, even allowing the woman in the marriage to bring it forth! If the husband was denying his wife sex because he became impotent, that would be grounds enough for divorce (though the onus would be on the wife to actually prove it).
Of the four other reasons for divorce - including the aforementioned never consummating it, cruelty, adultery, and constant quarrels - the wife, if she was a persuasive sort, might have tried to argue it was cruel to leave her sexually starved, or that they argued constantly over how frequently their bedsport took place. I say “argue” because divorce was uncommon and never guaranteed; as one historian puts it, “death was the only sure release from unhappy marriage”.
Divorce being a non-starter in most cases, it’s not like the law forces husbands to perform when they don’t choose to. Our theoretical wife in question doesn’t have access to modern-day couples therapy; the closest she could get is discussing matters over with a priest, who, if he too believed strongly in the biblical command to a wife’s sexual pleasure, might seek to help them get livelier in the bedroom. This could work as the clergy had certain beliefs about a woman’s needs: “The Church believed that women were constantly craving sexual intercourse and that if they did not have sex they could get very sick. Thus it was important that after marriage a man had sexual intercourse with his wife not only to produce children but to keep her under control.”
But generally two things would resolve it before that took place: one, spouses were very close with both holding great power so they could simply talk things through to find an optimal, sexy solution. Two: while sex was important, it wasn’t a cultural priority. Love was not seen as this enduring lifelong state. When love (which encompasses sexual passion) faded, you still had to stay together no matter how dissatisfied you were. Which is to say, your sexual pleasure did not come close to what you prioritize in a marriage. If this wife has an otherwise agreeable marriage and relationship, she would have been expected to simply soldier on. After all, we all have our crosses to bear; this one may as well be hers.
As a side question: how common was adultery amongst the nobility during Tudor, Elizabethan or Jacobean era England? Are there any writings such as letters or journals by people (especially women) who were involved in extramarital affairs from this era that have survived to be studied in the present day? Comparatively, how common was adultery on the Continent, such as in France, the Low Countries or throughout Renaissance Italy?