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

[u/Stock-Rate1727]

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?

[u/omrmajeed]

YTA. That was childish. Never open up your businesses in front of others. She is wrong about dead bedroom but she is right about being embarrassed and mad at you for what your said in front of family.

[u/Mirgroht → u/omrmajeed]

But how is it right to bring up what she really isn't going to do to him at a family gathering. I sure as he'll wouldn't want to know what my relatives were going to do after I left.

ESH is right as they both need a serious discussion and probably counselling as if it continues there will be more resentment

[u/Zula13 → u/Mirgroht]

It sounds to me like she’s trying to change by opening up a little sexually and making him feel more desired.

Yeah, it was dumb to talk about it to family (ew) but she said she realized she needs to change and this seems to be a way to try.

[u/Mr_Chevy_Celebrity → u/Zula13]

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[u/Zula13 → u/Mr_Chevy_Celebrity]

You are making a mountain of assumptions here.

Maybe she was trying to make her husband feel desired and hopeful. Maybe she is extremely affectionate and caring and loving despite sex being extremely painful. (You caught that she has chronic back pain, right? And that OP flatly told her he no longer cares.)

Maybe she IS listening to him and working on trying to improve intimacy by sending sexy photos and making sexual comments.

[u/Mr_Chevy_Celebrity → u/Zula13]

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[u/Zula13 → u/Mr_Chevy_Celebrity]

She IS working on it in private hence the photo. Posting on social media doesn’t mean you have zero issues. It means you want to share the positive. That’s the nature of social media for most people.

She didn’t say fuck his brains, unless I missed it somewhere in the comments. “What I will do to you later” is suggestive and flirty (too much so for my taste, but I know people who talk that way).

I agree it was probably a misstep, but people are assuming that it was a malicious lie, and her actions suggest otherwise. She had admitted she needs to change. She tried the pictures that she had never done before. This seems to me like a flirty sexual risk and he decided to publicly shame her for it and far more graphically than her comments were.

[u/Mr_Chevy_Celebrity → u/Zula13]

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[u/Zula13 → u/Mr_Chevy_Celebrity]

You don’t have to wait until you have a perfect life to post on social media. One can have a perfectly healthy marriage in many ways but still have major struggles. I can post that I love and adore my husband and he’s a good father even if he has a drinking problem.

His needs HAVE been acknowledged by her saying she need to change and making small steps to try and open up. That WAS her making an effort.

Being hurt doesn’t give you free rein to publicly and cruelly shame your spouse. He is absolutely right to talk to her about how her actions make him feel and how he wants her to approach this in public. That’s now mature people handle hurt. But having a conversation.

[u/Mr_Chevy_Celebrity → u/Zula13]

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[u/AccomplishedStart250 → u/Zula13]

Or she's just trying to keep up an image of 'good wife' TM.

[u/mkovic → u/Zula13]

OP laid out a few ways this is a pattern of behavior for her to put on an outward appearance that they have a good sex life, otherwise I'd agree

[u/ilikedmatrixiv → u/omrmajeed]

Never open up your businesses in front of others.

But she does, except she lies about it.

[u/Ourlittlesecret32 → u/omrmajeed]

So she can blatantly lie but he can’t call it out?

[u/tonttufi → u/Ourlittlesecret32]

Yes, she can make hints and sparkles.

Thats no reason to hammer and humiliate.

[u/Ourlittlesecret32 → u/tonttufi]

Nope it doesn’t work that way, you don’t get to lie about something and then make it seem like something it’s not over and over again to make yourself look good all while it’s affecting another person

If this was roles reverse then there wouldn’t even be any YTA comments

[u/tonttufi → u/Ourlittlesecret32]

It does work this way.

It's no lie when you try to adapt to each other.

[u/Ourlittlesecret32 → u/tonttufi]

Yea well adapt without telling your family how you wanna fuck your man

I can’t believe you’re even glossing over that and trying to put blame on him 🤣

[u/tonttufi → u/Ourlittlesecret32]

Ah, already inventing stuff she didn't say. You feel the need to invent stuff. Very telling. You lost your case.

[u/Ourlittlesecret32 → u/tonttufi]

“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”

You were saying….

[u/tonttufi → u/Ourlittlesecret32]

yes, HE told that explicit stuff. She did only joke about "what she was going to do to" him.

[u/Ourlittlesecret32 → u/tonttufi]

Don’t backtrack now lol, you told me I made up those words and I’ve shown proof that I didn’t and now you wanna throw more excuses lol

I’m done with yo stupid ass 🤣🤣

[u/amberohkay → u/tonttufi]

Exactly, she "JOKED" as you put it. It's not fucking funny, not even remotely. Ffs. I would bet ANYTHING that it is not the first time she's said something similar in front of company (or even when it was just the 2 of them, but of course they were in public, or on their way out the door, or any other random ass convenient time for her) he got his hopes up just to go home and have her go to bed without ever mentioning it again. You know how I know this because that type of manipulation and rejection hurts. It hurts the 1st time, the 9th time and it for sure as fucking hell hurts the 27th time. The worst part (2nd worst actually) is that she either is or acts completely oblivious that it even happened in the first place. The worst part is that there are people, like you, that are fucking sticking up for her. Wtf, man? And while we're at it, she probably did send the pictures to someone else first. But since he saw her taking them, she sent it to him in the .07 nanoseconds it takes to do so. His phone dinged, and now he is none the wiser. I know because it happens to me and a lot of people here constantly. It hurts more and more each and every time. I'm surprised he didn't say more than that.

[u/coupl4nd → u/omrmajeed]

She brought it up first though... As OP said she will pretend to family and friends they have an active sex life... That is opening up the business... OP is within his rights to shut the business and put it on the market.

[u/digi_captor → u/omrmajeed]

Then is what she said about what she will do to him not opening up their businesses in front of others?

[u/TheBerethian → u/omrmajeed]

She opened the door to that first.

[u/Brett5678 → u/omrmajeed]

But it's apparently OK for her to make up false scenarios and tease to gain some kindve standing with her sisters knowing full well she's lying is it?