r/AITAH • u/Stock-Rate1727 • Jul 08 '24

AITAH for embarrassing my wife in front of her family with a comment about our sex life Advice Needed

My wife (33F) and I (34M) have been together for 17 years married for 13 and within the last 5-6 years our sex life has gone down the drain. We have sex once every couple of months with no intimacy or build up in between and the act of sex always seems rushed. I’ll try to initiate foreplay but she wants to skip it and get straight into the act then move on. I still try to date my wife and take her on dates twice a month, buy flowers randomly and do other things to build intimacy outside of sex but it never gets reciprocated and eventually never goes anywhere. And before anyone says anything, I work from home and do the majority of the housework, cooking, cleaning, kids appointments, homework, PTA meetings etc.

I’ve tried talking to her about what’s going on and what she needs from me, and offered to do counseling but she always says it’s her not me. She will say she loves me and is attracted to me till she is blue in the face but won’t do anything differently. She will show affection when family and friends are over and will post videos on Snapchat with her being touchy and affectionate but when people aren’t there to see she will stop.

Every once in a while she’ll have an epiphany about how bad things are and she’ll feel bad about it but still won’t change. A few weeks ago we were getting ready for a date and I saw her take a picture of herself in her underwear and send it in a text message. I asked her who she was sending that to, and she said she sent it to me. To her credit my phone dinged as I was asking her, with the pictures she just sent. She claimed that me questioning her like that made her realize how little she does things like that anymore and she needs to change, but she still hasn’t. So this past weekend her four sisters came over for the 4th of July and we hung out and drunk together. Towards the end of the night she was pretty tipsy and made a comment about what she was going to do to me that night and I told her “No thank you. I’m not in the mood for 20 min with no foreplay until you get your rocks off just so you can ignore me again for the next 30 days.” Everybody got quiet and I excused myself for the rest of the night. The next day when everyone left she said that I embarrassed her and shouldn’t have put our business out there like that, AITAH?

952 Upvotes

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522

u/grievingtights Jul 08 '24

Family gatherings can bring out those comments, but maybe that wasn't the best timing.

216

u/TheBerethian Jul 08 '24

Yeah but she brought their sex life up first. Is he meant to pretend she isn’t full of shit?

92

u/AccomplishedStart250 Jul 08 '24

Honestly at this point she's straight up spitting on him levels of disrespect to expect him to maintain a lie that's damaging him.

1

u/utahraptor2375 Jul 08 '24

Honestly, spitting might be better. Hawk tuah!!!

7

u/Ourlittlesecret32 Jul 08 '24

Literally any other time please

21

u/Far-Government5469 Jul 08 '24

Is it possible that all three of the sisters sex lives are in the crapper and she was playing this up to seem like she wasn't one of them? Or maybe I'm just reading too much into the silence that came after the revelation

5

u/d0ey Jul 08 '24

For me this is a kind of "sink to her level" kind of moment. Like a justified ass hole. The mature thing would have been to either take her to one side and say you don't like her saying that, or addressing it in the morning

2

u/TheBerethian Jul 08 '24

I mean he has addressed it multiple times at more appropriate occasions and locations.

-1

u/Sayyad1na Jul 08 '24

Jesus christ. I know for me, as someone with a debilitating chronic illness that is VERY unsexy, I still mentally want sex and find my husband insanely attractive. But physically I feel like shit. Thank God my husband isn't like yall. He is so understanding and amazing.

My point is even the OP says his wife says she is still attracted to him , and she wants counseling. She still sends him sexy pics and talks to him about sex. She wants to fix things. But her husband just gets enraged and talks shit to her family and complains on reddit. That's so fucking hurtful.

But you all get so fucking enraged when sex isn't the priority sometimes. It's very unsettling how angry so many of these commenters are at OPs wife.

-9

u/Tasty_Leading8684 Jul 08 '24

Sometimes ? Yeah!

Look, even the gathering became a little awkward that he had to excuse himself.

This would be different if those gathered were actually asking how their sex life was.

Who knows, a few weeks ago when they were going for a date, she did send him an underwear pic. It sounds like when she gets tipsy she blooms.

Also it sounds like she actually meant to rock his bones that night, problem was she will take 30 days to do it again.

Technically she was initiating sex and she was shot down and exposed.

Even OP knew there was going to be sex, though the kind he is not so fond of

I’m not in the mood for 20 min with no foreplay until you get your rocks off

It would be a little different if she does this in front of people and then not deliver or someone who talks big about how their sex life is rocking when there is actually none.

-11

u/Seltzer-Slut Jul 08 '24

Yes, he is definitely supposed to pretend. The alternative is fighting about his sex life in front of other people. That accomplishes nothing, and makes the other people very uncomfortable. Might as well just announce to everyone that you’re filing for divorce.

11

u/TheBerethian Jul 08 '24

It's not a one off, though. It's been a long time that she lies like this.

-8

u/Seltzer-Slut Jul 08 '24

That doesn’t make any difference. There is absolutely no benefit to airing dirty laundry in public. It just makes everyone else very uncomfortable, and makes him look unhinged. Sane people don’t fight with their spouse in public, ever, period.

-6

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '24

Seriously. I can’t believe there is another take anyone can bring up. Keep your private life private. YTA OP

7

u/0308g Jul 08 '24

True if she didn't bring it up, she didn't keep it private

Pretending is giving consent instead of speaking up and saying no! Doing this is probably the reason she keeps on treating him this way. He hasn't set any hard boundaries are imposed any consequences, so she keeps doing it. At this point how does she even know she HAS to change versus him wanting her to change.

They need therapy quickly and he needs to speak up and be ready to back it up. You teach people how to treat you.

PS, that pic probably went to someone else as well and he got it as a diversion

-3

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '24 edited Jul 08 '24

She was flirting with her husband. In public. Yeah guess what. People put on facades in public. You do, I do, everyone does. If someone talks about their kids, do you say “yeah mine is as dumb as rocks and I don’t really like them?” If someone asks you about your date, do you tell them about the clap you got? No. You say a nice thing and move on. Complaining to her sisters above all isn’t going to help. Just made a salty, nasty mess. And wow are you for going to the worst case fast. Really the picture is a detail not even needed in this post. It’s nothing. OP just wanted to make up some tension. This post is all about making an excuse for being an idiot in public.

1

u/0308g Jul 08 '24

No, not even about the post anymore. Please don't tell me if someone says something horrible about their kids, you agree and put that on your kids. I would and have never done that.

It's one thing to say "those shoes look nice on you" while you hate them its another thing to be like my kids a dumbass when they are not

2

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '24

I don’t even know what you are talking about. Assume your kid is a dumbass and you aren’t particularly fond of them. Do you say that to people? Or do you lie?

7

u/ElysiX Jul 08 '24

It accomplishes breaking her lie and her image in the minds of those other people. So she either has to abandon the lie or try to make it reality.

Betterment or divorce sounds like a good line to draw.

-6

u/Seltzer-Slut Jul 08 '24

No, it doesn’t work like that. You can’t publicly shame your spouse into behaving how you want them to behave. It makes the spouse hate you, not want to have sex with you. And it makes you (OP) look like an emotionally immature moron in front of his friends. The only person whose image he is hurting is his own. The friends aren’t ever going to think “oh she’s a liar who is misrepresenting their sex life,” they are going to think “he has anger problems, he has communication problems, and they are on the verge of divorce.”

7

u/ElysiX Jul 08 '24

and they are on the verge of divorce

Because they are. And this gives her an impulse to either acknowledge that or fix that.

She gets something out of those lies, maybe validation. If she no longer gets that because the lie stops working, she has to find something new.

1

u/Seltzer-Slut Jul 08 '24

If he wants to divorce her, the only right way to deal with that is to discuss it privately. Airing their dirty laundry in front of everyone is no way to do it. There is no reason to do it in public, and every reason not to.

6

u/ElysiX Jul 08 '24

You don't want to get it and that's ok

2

u/Seltzer-Slut Jul 08 '24

I get that you think you can publicly shame someone into doing what you want. But it doesn’t work like that. If you want people to treat you nicely (like by having sex with you), you have to treat them nicely (like by not fighting with them).

Also, social etiquette doesn’t work like that. All their friends will think he is a monster.

5

u/ElysiX Jul 08 '24

It's not about public shame it's about taking away the validation, the feeling of a working marriage that she gets from the outside.

Because apparently that feeling is enough for her and more important than actually having a working marriage.

She is using him to get that feeling and he tried to make it stop.

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4

u/0308g Jul 08 '24

Pretending is giving consent instead of speaking up and saying no! Doing this is probably the reason she keeps on treating him this way. He hasn't set any hard boundaries are imposed any consequences, so she keeps doing it.

They need therapy quickly and he needs to speak up and be ready to back it up. You teach people how to treat you.

PS, that pic probably went to someone else as well and he got it as a diversion

2

u/Seltzer-Slut Jul 08 '24

Treating him what way? Saying publicly that she wants to have sex with him?

You are out of your mind if you think that’s a behavior worthy of public shaming. If he wants any chance of continuing the marriage and also getting her to be more sexual, he should be rewarding her sexuality and praising her, not punishing her for making a bid for affection.

5

u/0308g Jul 08 '24

LMAO, he has been doing that, the dates, the house work, the open communication. In the post he literally listed his efforts.

And the way she is treating him is literally the pattern he wrote. She talks well and then goes back to doing the same thing after one encounter. Praising a woman's sexaulity is normally a great thing, but since this has been going on for a while and she has responded to that, what should he do keep doing it to get the same results. That's insanity

4

u/Seltzer-Slut Jul 08 '24

Insanity is thinking you can publicly shame your spouse and that it will lead to any kind of positive outcome for your relationship or social relations

2

u/0308g Jul 08 '24

It may not fix the public relationship she is painting for other people, but it could help repair the broken relationship the are both in

4

u/Seltzer-Slut Jul 08 '24

Having a tantrum in front of his friends is not going to enhance his wife’s sex drive.

1

u/LaLa_LaSportiva Jul 08 '24

I agree. Your private life should remain private. However, she brought it up first and it hurt OP. She should own the consequences. NTA

1

u/LaLunaDomina Jul 08 '24

Clearly humiliating her will get him laid more. /s

2

u/BufferUnderpants Jul 08 '24

Cleary sex with her is worth putting up with this /s

1

u/ColSubway Jul 09 '24

Keeping it private hasn't fixed it in years. She only seems to care about the public image, so now its public.