I think he was telling her he liked cigars but he took a break from smoking them.
The way she liked making babies.
Maybe sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
However, I don’t think many men support having sex only once or twice in twenty years of marriage, do they? It’s the natural outcome of sex with women that they don’t like ... suggesting (back to my original point) that they really just need to do it with each other.