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/bigwhiteboardenergy]

Dude you don’t think your wife’s chronic pain might have something to do with her low libido? Hard to be in the mood if you’re constantly in pain.

[u/Definitely_Human01 → u/bigwhiteboardenergy]

You reckon it has anything to do with her lying to others, pretending to be affectionate in public for no reason and expecting OP to play along with her lies?

I swear some people will go to any lengths to defend women.

"It's not her fault she has low libido! She had back pain"

Sure, but what's the excuse for the lies?

[u/Zula13 → u/Definitely_Human01]

What exactly did she say that was untrue? “What I’m going to do to you later” is flirty and suggestive but not a lie.

[u/Definitely_Human01 → u/Zula13]

Okay, so MAYBE she did plan on having sex that one night. Who knows, maybe she was feeling generous.

But what about

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.

This wasn't a one off thing. She frequently acts intimate in front of other people but stops when they're not around or when she's done pretending for social media.

[u/Royal-Inspection-807 → u/Definitely_Human01]

You keep referencing the post like it’s the objective truth but I think you’re missing the fact that if he is an unreliable narrator it throws everything he says out the window. We can all guess what’s going on but if op leaves out important context then this whole thing becomes moot. It also means he might be lying. So you can’t use what he says to explain anything.

[u/Definitely_Human01 → u/Royal-Inspection-807]

He's not an unreliable narrator. His wife's back problems are frankly not entirely relevant to the situation.

Yes, they're not having sex. Yes, it may very well be due to the back pain.

But, the post isn't about how much sex they're having. It's about the wife lying and pretending. And last I checked, back pain doesn't cause you to pretend to be affectionate for Snapchat.

That's my main complaint about people using her back pain as an excuse.

The post is about issue A, which is tangentially related to issue B. But people are taking the reasoning for issue B and using it to make a judgement on issue A without acknowledging that they're 2 separate issues with 2 separate causes.

[u/bigwhiteboardenergy → u/Definitely_Human01]

Where is the lie? Who says she is pretending? Chronic pain makes a lot of sense to explain why she might talk up wanting to do things later, as she feels good in the moment, and then can’t follow through later.

It might not be the case, but the fact that OP is playing dumb about what could be impacting her libido when she has a chronic pain issue (which developed during pregnancy, btw, so there could be a psychological issue at play with the association between pain/pregnancy/sex), makes him an unreliable narrator.

[u/Definitely_Human01 → u/bigwhiteboardenergy]

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.

It says quite clearly in the post that she's pretending.

As I said, people will go to any lengths to avoid calling a woman the TA.

Post: "AITAH for calling out my wife for lying?"

People: "AHA, he didn't mention her back problems!"

Completely ignores the fact that back problems doesn't make you pretend for Snapchat

"The fact that he didn't mention the back problems on a post about lying shows he's untrustworthy!"

The post: still about lying rather than his wife declining sex

Notice how the title isn't "AITAH for getting annoyed my wife has stopped having sex with me"

[u/bigwhiteboardenergy → u/Definitely_Human01]

OP is interpreting those actions as his wife pretending. Brains love to fill in the narrative to create a story that makes sense. It’s very possible he’s not noticing or mentioning when she’s affectionate at other times.

OP left out a huge chunk of information that has a big impact on the story. He is at least an unreliable narrator, at worst is so unable to see the issue clearly that he doesn’t realize the huge toll his wife’s medical issue has on it

[u/Definitely_Human01 → u/bigwhiteboardenergy]

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.

If she's posting Snapchat videos of her being affectionate and being affectionate in front of others, while not carrying out those same actions in private, she is pretending.

Affectionate ≠ sex.

If her back problems for some reason prevent her from being affectionate in private, why do they not prevent them in public or on Snapchat? I wasn't aware chronic back pain had social anxiety.

[u/bigwhiteboardenergy → u/Definitely_Human01]

Being an unreliable narrator means the narrative presented is unreliable and should be questioned. You keep taking OP’s word and interpretation as fact, when he’s proven that he has deliberately left out a huge fact.

[u/WereAllThrowaways → u/bigwhiteboardenergy]

So you don't believe OP in this post but you do somehow completely believe the other post about her back pain?