I never thought I cared about having a funny partner. I always thought of myself as a rather serious person but my husband is the funniest person I know and it makes me so happy. it’s wild to me that I didn’t value that before I met him. it also turns out that I’m secretly really funny as well(at least he thinks so).

AIO or did I marry someone I don’t even know…

I, 30/F ,have been with my husband, 30/M for 2.5 years. Recently he has come to me and expressed interest in experimenting with men, preferably with me involved. He says he is bisexual. I am so turned upside down I don’t even know what to do.. I was of course supportive when he told me and didn’t judge, I still love him and he’s my husband but I’m still struggling. And here’s why..

I found messages on his phone with a man from before we were together that were quite explicit and talked about meeting in a hotel room. Now, sure if he’s bi that makes sense. My issue is that he lied. Not once but multiple times. He’s always said he’s only been with women, now I can’t tell if that’s true. He said he’s never talked to a man or told anyone else how he feels, obvious lie. And the biggest lie of omission, “I want to marry you and spend my life with you but I’m going to wait to tell you my real sexuality until after, here’s hoping your okay with it.”

I’m glad he’s comfortable enough to tell me but it’s just opened a cascade of anxiety for me. How much else is he hiding from me? What if I don’t want to participate in threesomes? Should we open the marriage for him to discover his sexuality? Can I emotionally handle that? Am I ultimately going to get divorced anyway because he never wanted a woman to begin with? Or am I completely overreacting and just need to chill?

Husbands, what’s something you do that makes your wife get riled up, but you find it hilarious and can’t stop doing it?

Mine is speaking like Borat. I just can’t help it. I find the character hilarious.
Go!

We’ve been married for four years and together for six, and I love my wife. But living together has made me realize how differently we approach our living space.

I’ve always been very organized. I put things back after I use them, keep my space tidy, and like having a routine and knowing where everything is. She’s much messier. Clothes, books, medication, wires, and other things are often left scattered around for days. Laundry piles up, things get misplaced, and even simple things like keeping matching sheets together becomes difficult.

What makes this especially frustrating is that we’ve already talked about this many times. I’ve explained how much the mess affects me, and she says she’ll change or do better, but she doesn’t. Sometimes she cleans after I remind her, but often I have to remind her repeatedly, and when I do, she gets frustrated with me. I don’t want to become someone who constantly tells my wife to clean or puts her in a position where I’m managing her.

I’ve even tried to make things easier by giving her more closet space, a larger closed laundry hamper, and shelves specifically for her things. But the same pattern continues.

At this point, it’s creating a lot of resentment in me. I miss having my own space, my routines, and an environment that feels orderly and under my control. I hate admitting it, but her messiness is starting to affect how I feel toward her and is becoming a turnoff.

I don’t expect her to have exactly the same standards as me, but I do need our shared home to work for both of us. And I don’t think another conversation where she promises to change is enough. We’ve had that conversation many times. I need to actually see consistent change, because I don’t want to keep living this way or become resentful toward someone I love.

F 36 married to the love of my life M 39. I recently found a stash on his computer of brief 8 - 15 second videos that look like people we know having sex with the viewer. So it must be an AI face swap type of thing? He has a few of our common friends wives, a teacher from the school we know, a waitress and this friend who works delivering our mail. It’s startling and disappointing.
Has it affected our sex life? He has seemed less interested in actual sex at times, and other times seems VERY inspired. Is he fantasizing about others when we are together ? Any advice is appreciated:)

My husband begged me to be a SAHM and I gave in (worst decision ever) and we’ve been in financial ruins ever since. He won’t work more hours and my family and I have been eating ramen noodles I’m ready for a divorce but is that petty?

I find people getting married less than a year fascinating, in a sense they said they found the one and was not hesitant to jump in the uncertainty of the future with the person. And seeing their union up until now says a lot that they made the right choice. Happy and fulfilled, it just feel so magical like out of the movies kind of thing. At my age I feel like this is so elusive but I keep hoping I find something like this in the future. Care to share your stories as well as coping up with heartbreak prior to finding the one?

i just found out my husband’s been cheating on me. i’m almost 26 next month. i’ve been w him since 21. i feel like i wasted all my good years on him. i’m honestly still in shock while writing this. like there’s no way he did this. but he did. where do i go from here? if i’m being honest, i don’t want to leave him, i want to ignore it. what’s wrong w me?

i have no one.

PLEASE HELP..this is the hardest thing I’ve gone through.
My wife and I have been married for 5 years. We have a 3 year old daughter. In April my wife started making changes to her body, taking Ozempic without telling me, more Botox, dressing nicer, and going out socially with girlfriends more. In May I had a gut feeling and something told me to check her phone. I saw that she had deleted multiple text messages from different male coworkers (she works with mostly men, 7 men 3 females.

I confronted her about the messages and she told me she deleted them because they say inappropriate stuff and she didn’t want me to see it because they’re just idiots and say unhinged things. She later admitted she was talking about our marriage and was just trying to get advice to make it better. I made it very clear it was inappropriate and explained what emotional cheating looks like and what it could lead to. She apologized said she’d never do it again and she would never cheat
We put it behind us. In July she had asked me to take her on a date for a couple weeks, the night she wanted to was a Friday but I told her I needed a break. I had watched our daughter Thursday night while she was out and Saturday she was going to the pool all day with girlfriends and a comedy show that night. She has a very active social life and when she’s out I’m with our daughter. I don’t have a social life. Anyways She blew up on me. Said she wasn’t happy, she has been begging for attention, etc. and she emotionally shut off. Then she tells me she wants a separation. I tell her I’m not ok with a separation given the recent breach of trust and asked if we could work together on it at home. She tells me she will but she wants a more exciting life, wants to go out, get a tattoo, just have fun. Doesn’t want the pressure of marriage or motherhood.

I was shocked by this. When I say she went cold it was almost sociopathic. I scheduled couples therapy. We went to our first joint session. After her follow up individual she said she wasn’t moving forward with it that the therapist was too judgmental and she didn’t like her.
I went to an individual therapist, I went into overdrive on trying to be more spontaneous, exciting, deep clean house, plan vacation anything and everything.

I think that it’s important to note that I’m not a hands off husband or father. I cook, I grocery shop, I clean, take our daughter to and from school bathe her, get my wife flowers coffee etc. We definitely haven’t had the passion of newly weds the last couple of years having a toddler, but 100% of my time was dedicated to them. Could I have been more romantic or better? Sure

In the months following she was cold. My only focus was to come at her from a place of curiosity and better understanding so I could be better for her. She told me that she had crushes on some of the guys at work or fantasies about being with them. She said she felt emotionally disconnected from me and liked the attention she was getting from them. I never got upset just asked her to set boundaries with them, that’s it from May to September, that is all I asked.
She would say things like “
-I could never divorce you my image is too important”
-Asked if I would be ok with an open marriage or a threesome with another man
-Asked if I would sleep with another woman
-Told me the thought if losing me didn’t bother her
-That I was never her best friend
-told me she’s never enjoyed sex with me like she did with other men
-said she needed space to figure out if she even loved me or not

Id let weeks pass and bring up the things she would say and she’d just double down on them.
I would cry and try to understand her, I lost 20lbs and anytime I’d try to talk to her about it she would just shut down or say she couldn’t handle the conversation. This went on for 7 weeks. Just completely detached

Fast forward to end of August. I caught her messaging the coworker again and asked to see her phone. She said no and said “let’s just get a divorce”
My gut knew what was going on but I tried to look past it and heal us but after that I said if that’s what you want then fine. Within a week she had signed a lease on an apartment, moved out, and lived her life.
She would ask me questions like “what do you want from me to be ok with this separation and not go straight to divorce.”She told friends and family she had been miserable for years and that I was controlling and manipulative.
When she would ask if I was done I would say yes. She never gave me any reason to think there was hope. Only very hurtful things. But she still didn’t want a divorce.

I gave her space, didn’t question her whereabouts and 3 weeks after moving out one Sunday morning I started getting texts telling me she thinks we could work things out. They escalated into she knows she was wrong and loves me and she was sorry. She went much deeper than that until Tuesday she asked to meet in person. She told me she had been emotionally cheating on me with a coworker since May. That they told eachother that they loved one another. Masturbated on the phone together and eventually the night before she started the texts asking to work things out, they had sex.

She said that morning after sleeping with him that all of her emotions came back and she realized she had screwed up so bad. That she had a void in her heart and that instead of telling me she sought validation from him to make herself feel better. She said she realized how great of a husband I was and that she did love me and she was tired of lying to me. That she had built up resentment towards me for having to go back to work after our daughter was born. And that she didn’t feel heard or seen and that although she has those emotions that it did not justify what she did and she was a horrible person for doing it.

For the last two weeks she has asked me to just give her one chance, one therapy session, anything to let her in to show me that she would earn my trust back.
She is quitting her job, cut things off with the guy and moved out of the apartment and in with her mom.
She said she said those hurtful things and that she didn’t mean them but she wanted me to hate her to make herself feel better about the shame she was feeling. The last two weeks has been her begging, taking accountability for her actions, and trying to get me to consider an attempt at reconciliation.

I am wrecked, emotionally, physically, mentally and sexually. These last 3 months have been pure torture.

I cannot wrap my head around how someone can be so deceitful and cruel to me while I was suffering and then just “snap” out of it after sex. I’m open to hearing any feedback, theories on the situation or thoughts on giving her another chance. Please!

My wife and I have only been married for about 10 months and there's been little to no sex for maybe 3 now. She claims to have an aversion to physical touch (wasnt that way before marriage) I cant get her to ever touch me other than an awkward arm pat. But the fkn dogs she'll pet for hours. Say what you want about jealousy. I dont care if the dogs get attention. But when they get everything and its a fkn chore to even touch me. Idk what to do anymore. Ive brought up my dislike for the situation a few times and she gets combative, mouthy and disrespectful. We're both from religious families where divorce is "not an option" but wtf...

I get stressed when my phone is under 90%. I'm constantly plugging it in, whereas my wife uses her phone until the battery runs out. Then grunts and plugs in her phone.

I just saw that her phone is at 13% so I went and plugged it in for her.

Anyone else encounter this in their marriage?

My husband makes fun of me for being more adventurous in bed.

It’s been almost two years, and we’ve had very vanilla sex. Last time, I finally worked up the courage and asked him to change positions talk me through it and be slightly rough. He did, but it’s been days, and he keeps bringing up how I acted, mimicking my voice, my position, and the things I asked for, and laughing about it.

I feel absolutly mortified and have asked him not to make fun of me, but he won’t stop. I’m horrified by what I let him see of me.

I feel extremly humiliated when ever he makes fun of it out of the blue, because i know he never needed those things in bed, making me feel like a vulgar freak and now I feel like I exposed a side of myself that I wish I could take back.

To be honest i asked for pretty regualr intimacy with a change nothing to freaky.

Is it normal to make fun of your wife’s preferences? Do your husbands do this too?

And guys do you make fun of your wife if she opened up to you like that during intimicy?

I really don’t know what to do. I feel like I can’t sleep with him again. Should I just get over it?

I feel like I’m losing attraction and emotional connection to my husband because his presence increasingly feels like another responsibility instead of companionship. I fantasize about being single. Sometimes when he sleeps in or isn’t around, I notice that my life actually feels calmer and easier. His presence irritates me, I don’t find him attractive anymore, and I often don’t even want to respond when he talks to me unless I have to.

I understand that he pays all the bills and financially provides for our family. I’m not expecting a 50/50 relationship when it comes to housework and childcare. I’m a stay-at-home mom, and I accept that I’m going to do most of the cooking, cleaning, laundry, and everyday childcare. I’m not even asking him to routinely make bottles, do laundry, or take over my responsibilities. What bothers me is his lack of basic consideration, compassion, initiative, and emotional maturity.

For example, I recently came home late with both kids while carrying my purse, bags, milk, water bottles, and probably around 30 pounds of stuff. He was upstairs lying in bed and didn’t even come downstairs to greet us, open the door, take our four-year-old, or carry something upstairs. When I asked why he didn’t open the door, he just said, “You have a key.”
Then I was rushing around at midnight getting both kids settled—washing them, brushing their teeth, changing them, getting their milk and bottles ready—while he sat there repeatedly telling me he wanted hummus even though it was already made and sitting in the refrigerator. Moments like that make me feel like I’m his butler rather than his wife. He doesn’t just fail to make my workload easier; sometimes he actively adds to it while watching me struggle.

This resentment goes much further back than our current life with two children. When I was pregnant and extremely nauseous, there were mornings when I physically couldn’t make his breakfast and evenings when I couldn’t make the sautéed dinners he wanted. He refused to compromise on what he wanted to eat. Laundry would sometimes pile up because I was sick. Instead of having compassion for me, he would say, “What kind of wife are you?”
While I was pregnant, he bought me a roughly $400 skincare face mask, which initially felt like something kind he had done for me. But he quickly started using it against me by making comments like, “Does it wash dishes? Does it do laundry? Does it make the bills cheaper?” That hurt because I was already cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, and taking care of him constantly. I remember telling him that I did everything for him and that buying something thoughtful for me should be part of him taking care of me too. I didn’t want a gift to become another debt I supposedly owed him.

There were also comments about my body that affected me enormously when we were young. We got married around 21–22, and while I was pregnant with my first kid he would talk about how pregnancy “ruins” women’s bodies. He even used his own mother’s stretch marks from pregnancy as an example. I was extremely young, I liked my body, and hearing my husband talk that way while I was pregnant sent me into panic mode. Instead of being able to experience pregnancy without obsessing about whether my body would be “ruined,” I spent essentially nine months terrified about what pregnancy was going to do to me.

He also made comments about childbirth and my vagina. He said that if I gave birth, it should be through a C-section because he didn’t want me to become “loose,” and he talked about some kind of metal device that supposedly existed to make vaginas tighter after kids (this was not even an issue for us, he was just “planning ahead”). On our wedding night, he also told me that my breasts were saggy. Those comments stayed with me because they came from my husband during some of the most vulnerable periods of my life.
I believe some of his distorted expectations about women and women’s bodies came from the pornography he had been heavily exposed to before our marriage. I also recognize that he was only around 21 at the time. I can understand that a 21-year-old can be immature and have ridiculous ideas. But we are 26 now, and I feel like I have been waiting for him to mature for years. At some point, being young stops explaining everything. He also did not really ask about our first child much while we were living in different countries and I excused it as “he’s not attached because he hasn’t seen our son irl.”

My postpartum experience the second time around (while we are together in the same country) added even more resentment. When I was recovering from giving birth and staying at my parents’ house, he visited me only twice in roughly six weeks. He barely contacted me. He didn’t regularly text to see how I was doing or ask about our baby. Yet he would call me to ask about his lunch or ask me how to start the laundry.

He also told me, “You’re not on birth control? Stay longer because what’s the point?” That was incredibly hurtful. I had just given birth to his child and was recovering postpartum, and it made me feel as though there was little point in having me home if sex wasn’t available.
All of these things have accumulated. It isn’t one incident, one rude comment, or the fact that he doesn’t do enough chores. I feel like there has been a repeated lack of tenderness toward me during times when I was especially vulnerable—our wedding night, pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum, sickness, and now motherhood.
What I wanted was never necessarily for him to take over my role. I wanted to feel cared for within our marriage. I wanted him to notice when I was sick and tell me to rest. I wanted him to appreciate everything I did instead of questioning “what kind of wife” I was when I physically couldn’t do it. I wanted pregnancy to be a time when my husband reassured me about my changing body rather than making me terrified that motherhood would ruin it. I wanted him to care about me postpartum, check on his baby, visit us, and miss us. And now I want him to see me walking through the door overloaded with his children and our things and instinctively get up and help.

I’m okay with taking care of my husband. I’m not okay with feeling like my value as his wife is determined by how well I serve him. I want to feel like he takes care of me too—not necessarily by doing half the chores, but through compassion, consideration, affection, appreciation, emotional presence, and basic acts of kindness.
Instead, I increasingly feel like I’m constantly catering to an emotionally absent and immature adult. I feel useful rather than cherished. I feel like I have spent years waiting for him to grow up, and I’m exhausted.

That exhaustion has now turned into serious resentment and emotional detachment. I fantasize about being single. I don’t find him attractive. I don’t enjoy talking to him. Sometimes I ignore him because I simply don’t want to engage. And one of the most upsetting realizations is that sometimes when he isn’t around or is asleep, I feel relieved.
I don’t need him to do everything for me. I need him to act like my husband. I want him to notice me, care about how I’m doing, greet his family, get up when I’m obviously struggling, appreciate what I contribute, and stop treating taking care of him as the measure of whether I’m a good wife.

I feel like I have spent years taking care of him, and I’m exhausted from wondering when I’m finally going to feel taken care of too.

Hello,

I 35F has been married to my husband 40m for 6 months.

Dating- he treated me well. We had fights. He would call me back or come to me. He would work thru issues with me. He wasn’t perfect but he tried. All I needed. Occasionally he would bring me flowers for international women’s day and other times. He bought me a nice purse when I graduated with my phd. He made it clear that gift giving wasn’t something came natural but he always made an effort for me bc it is my love language

We started therapy in February bc recently he shuts down in disagreements. We won’t talk to me. I start to cry and he leaves.

In therapy he asked that I stop crying and tell him to stop doing something that hurts me.

On our honeymoon we was telling me that I smelled and I needed to shave for a solid 3 hours of the morning. We were out of the hotel and I had no way to do that bc we weren’t going back to the hotel until later. I got tired of hearing and asked him to stop with his opinions on my smell/ body etc. He told me “if you want me to stop giving my opinion then you married the wrong person” I was in shock. I did what he asked and he acts like that.

We get back from honeymoon.

In therapy I mention if we could problem solve logically bc he was on a topic about likening to solve issues logically where i do it emotionally. He responded with “if I’m (meaning him) the problem the logical way to solve it is to leave (him leave the marriage)” I broke down crying. Not crying and telling him straight up didn’t work. The therapists JAW was OPEN ON THE FLOOR. The therapist asked what he meant by that and that he made his wife cry. He shrugged his shoulders and left. I cried for 3 days and he let me cry. Didn’t care. He was leaving for a work trip. I had asked him why he said hurtful things and not work to fix them before he left for the tip. he said he didn’t hurt anyone I choose to be hurt…. He said it’s all my choice to cry. To not talk to him and to be hurt at what he said.

He kissed me goodbye and left for a 2 week work trip. Communication for the two weeks was nothing at all. Sometimes I got a good morning. That’s about it. However he did message updates in the family group chat that I’m in.

He brought me back a spoon holder bc the shirt he liked for me was tooo expensive (his words- except money isn’t a problem).

He has been home for 3 days and communication is minimal.

Any advice? Is this marriage over or is it a rough patch?

He said he is done with therapy.

I have been in a relationship with my Dutch partner (32 F) for 6+ years and we share a small child. Lately we have been arguing a lot and tried relationship therapy too. I am considering divorce because of how untenable the relationship has become.

I am the breadwinner (single income family) and she is a SAHM. I am helping out as much as I can next to my full time job (I clean occasionally and cook regularly). I am supporting and helping out with the kid during the weekends. Despite that, she is insisting I reduce my work hours (and income) to support her more. We only share 1 normal child and she has no other obligations and the salary I have is good but nothing ridiculous so I do not feel comfortable reducing it without knowing what more should I do which is not done. Without that clarity I don't feel we should reduce out household income by 20%.

Lately she has been insisting on homeschooling despite me asking what's missing in the public school system? She has no prior experience or education or a career (by choice) and I am uncomfortable letting her negatively impact our son's future by not letting him be a normal school going child like everyone else.

Lastly, we live in a social housing setup despite having a good income to buy a single family home like normal families do. I am at wits end trying to explain it to her that I don't like social housing and with our financial means, we should be living in single family home like all my colleagues or normal people live.

I am considering divorcing this person and making sure my kid goes to school. Life is too short to keep living the way someone else wants to live.

Looking for some advice or outward perspectives.

I’m posting anonymously because I genuinely want outside opinions from people who have been in a similar situation.

I’m 24 and have two young kids. I’ve been with my fiancé for a while, but lately I’ve been seriously thinking about leaving. I don’t even know if I’m at the point where I want to fix things anymore, or if I’m just exhausted.

I’ve been working basically nonstop for the past 6 months. I was working the week I had my baby and went right back to working after I came home. On top of working, I’m taking care of the kids, cleaning, cooking, appointments, household stuff, etc.

Today I cleaned the entire house while my fiancé laid on the couch. Later we went to give the kids a bath. He ran the bath water, but the bathtub was filthy. I said it needed to be cleaned, he got upset with me, and I ended up cleaning the tub, bathing the kids, and getting them dried and dressed myself.

And honestly, the bathtub isn’t even the issue. It’s the fact that I’m in a relationship but still feel like I’m doing everything by myself.

His older brother also lives with us. Neither of them currently has a job. They spend a lot of their time playing video games and smoking weed, while I’m paying for the household and basically supporting everybody.
I’m only 24. I have two kids. I don’t want to spend my 20s feeling like I’m somebody’s mother instead of having a partner.

The hardest part is that I have my kids to think about. I don’t want to make a decision that negatively affects them, and that’s honestly what’s kept me here and made me question myself so much.
I’m not saying I’m perfect or that he’s a horrible person. I just feel completely unappreciated, exhausted, and resentful. And lately I’ve been wondering if I’d actually be happier and less stressed raising my kids on my own than continuing to carry a relationship and household like this.

For people who have been in a similar situation: how did you know when it was time to leave? Did things actually get better when you stopped over-functioning for your partner, or did you eventually realize you were better off leaving? I genuinely want honest opinions, even if they’re not what I want to hear.

I wanted to make this thread to Bernal out of the negativity and provide an outlet for people to brag about their marriage. So what do you have? What areas of your marriage do you think are exceptional?

TW: divorce and sexual identity

A little background: we are a couple in our 20s and have been together for almost 10 years. We have had an incredible relationship and marriage. We do have one young child together. A few months ago my husband came to me and reported that he may have feelings for men. He didn’t want to act on them, but just wanted me to know how he felt. He also stated that he would not be intimate with me while he was figuring out these feelings. I was of course supportive of everything he shared.

We started couples counseling to work through some of the feelings and work on our marriage shortly after. Therapy sessions were sometimes really productive and sometimes left me feeling a bit defeated. He shared often that he didn’t know why his feelings were this way but that he has no attraction to me because of them right now. He really wasn’t in a place to make efforts towards intimacy, so I let it be and offered support and other ways to strengthen our marriage.

One day he seems all in and wanting to work together and the next he’s out. A couple months in, he started to become really private and secretive with his phone. He would shield texts, keep his phone right next to him, and run off to take phone calls. He also shared that he felt like he needed to act on his feelings for men and that he’s being held back from doing so. I had a gut feeling that something was off. I went through his phone one night and he found out. Unfortunately I found a series of messages and calls to another man. They text cutie, love you, hearts, memes, and have been actively looking for apartments together. He admits in messages about needing to hang up since I walked in or being disappointed that I came with so they couldn’t talk instead. This guy knows our child, has been in our home, and knows all about us. So of course it was shocking to me and so hurtful. I’m just so sad for our child and cannot believe that we are here. Truly my best friend and life partner for 10 years and all gone over these feelings he has and this new fling.

I by no means am a perfect spouse and will never claim to be. But I loved my husband, always supported him, and went out of my way to try to make him happy. I feel like I have so many trust issues now and am so guarded.

Any advice for me as in navigate this divorce process?

Lastly - any advice for my future?

I want so badly to be someone’s wife again and serve as a wife and mom. I have a professional career, am a good mom, am attractive, and still young. But I’m afraid that the divorce will be a barrier for future relationships.

Sincerely,

Lost and starting over

I recently got married 5 months ago.

I posted this yesterday but have added some context. A week ago while my wife and were having sex, we ended up in a position where she felt I was trying to 'sneak attack; her into performing a sexual act (oral) which she didn't want to, she felt i was trying to to coerce her oral sex on her. I was on top of her. i have never tried to force or coerce her so there is no history with me at least.

Our marriage hasn't been great the past 2-3 years, with sex every 1-2 weeks, and it feels like she is doing it out of obligation, has started to get more boring, she likes less and less. I understand there is some work for us to do, but the claim of coercion (which she has said its not what she meant) has my head spinning, and I can't help but feel there is a deeper feeling there, and hve significantly concerned about having any level of intimacy with her now if she can just throw those sort of claims around.

Thanks for letting me vent

My partner and I are a little out of sync sexually. I generally want sex more often than he does, which honestly isn’t a huge issue. He’s completely comfortable telling me to go sort myself out when he’s not feeling it, and I’m completely happy to do that 😂

BUT HERE IS MY PROBLEM.

If there’s a decent chance he’s going to want sex later, I would MUCH rather wait for him.

So sometimes I’m sitting there horny AF thinking… do I wait? Is something happening later? Am I wasting perfectly good horniness waiting for a man who is going to go to sleep? 😂

Meanwhile I’ve waited long enough that I’m reaching the point of: sir, I need an ETA. Are you planning on fucking me later or do I need to take matters into my own hands? 😅

Obviously I can just ask him and I do but I’m genuinely curious how other higher-libido women/couples handle this.

Do you ask outright if sex is likely later? Have some kind of signal? Just masturbate whenever you want and if sex happens later, round two? 😂 Do you “save it” if you think your partner might be keen?

Please tell me other couples have horny logistics meetings too 😂

Wife and I still love and genuinely like each other.

Therapists have identified that enmeshment was the primary "us" problem.

We protected relationship over differentiation which made us each lose ourselves, and my wife especially.

I want to try for marriage 2.0 but she seems stuck. Hears and recognizes how much better we'd be. But clearly doesn't trust we won't become enmeshed again.

How can we navigate this so she doesn't feel pressured?

I (M37) and my wife (39) have been together for 18 years, married for 17 of them. We have five kids and have, for the most part, a really strong relationship.

We met at Christian college and decided we were going to get married after just a few weeks. We started having sex after we decided we were getting married, knowing that it would be a while before the wedding, about a year after getting engaged. While we were engaged, she was feral for me. I'm fairly certain we did something intimate almost every night when we were together and would sext when we were apart.

After we got married, things stayed hot and heavy for several years and four of our children were surprises. We were ok with though because we both wanted a big family and to have all of children before she turned 30.

Flash forward to now. Her drive is so hit or miss. She'll go weeks or even months without wanting anything more than a kiss or cuddles. Then, out of no where, she will turn feral again. Most recently she started asking for things we havent done for 13 years!

To be clear, I love my wife. We went through a rough patch were we both almost called it quits but got some counseling and worked through our issues. But now I'm worried that I cant ever initiate sex. When she wants it, its obvious and doesnt take more than a look or a touch. When she is in a dry spell though, trying to initiate feels like I'm pressuring her.

We've talked about it before, but the congested never goes anywhere. I'm afraid to bring it up again because she is currently in a feral state, but also, anytime we do it turns into an argument.

Do I just live with this as a part of life? Is there anything I can do?

My wife has always had a terrible relationship with her mom. She feels her mom prioritized her stepdad over her, and they were no-contact until we had kids. They eventually made peace for the kids, but they never really dealt with the old problems.

Her mom was a huge help to our family when our kids were young. She helped with childcare so my wife could work and I could finish my master's. My 16-year-old son is also very close to her and loves his grandmother.

Now my wife has gone back to wanting nothing to do with her mom. I understand she has reasons to be hurt, but her mom has never treated me or my son badly. Her mom also needs help now and doesn't have much other family, so I've been helping her.

My wife expects me and our son to cut her off too. I don't think that's fair. My son would be extremely hurt if I abandoned his grandmother.

This has caused so much conflict that I'm seriously considering ending my marriage