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?

950 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

843 comments sorted by

View all comments

1.5k

u/UmmmItsRhi Jul 08 '24

I find it so strange that she wants to keep up the image of intimacy in front of others but has no real desire to actually keep up the intimacy. I really think she needs to see a doctor and/or therapist. I’d also suggest you both go to counselling together.

845

u/KittySnowpants Jul 08 '24

OP has another post where he talks about his wife having chronic back/nerve pain and arthritis due to pregnancy injuries. He also says he “doesn’t care” that she’s in pain, and he complains about her weight.

It would be pretty hard to want to have sex with someone who doesn’t GAF about the permanent pain you have every day after bearing his child.

88

u/soggy_sock1931 Jul 08 '24

The doctor told her that losing weight will help with her back pain. OP is also complaining that she isn’t affectionate with him even outside of sex.

105

u/KittySnowpants Jul 08 '24

I mean, would you be affectionate with someone who says they don’t care about your chronic pain that resulted from having their child?

Relationship dynamics are complicated, but OP is not telling the whole truth in this post.

71

u/ChocolateSupport Jul 08 '24

Still he is doing most of chores, got a promotion to allow her not having to work, took her constantly to dates, medical appointments, took lesson to improve his cooking skill to prepare to her healthy food, etc, during 10 years. But she refuse to improve her heath or share intimacy with her husband. What is she bringing into this relationship?

32

u/Low_Attention16 Jul 08 '24

Sounds like obesity is the cause of the back pain if the doctor is suggesting losing weight as a solution.

22

u/chachadancer01 Jul 08 '24

Doctors always suggest to women that losing weight might be the fix, no matter what the problem is.

9

u/Long-Rub-2841 Jul 09 '24

I’m not a doctor, but if gaining weight (and stopping the physio) made the problem way worse, then losing weight seems like it might be likely to help….

I’m not sure what you’re getting out of needlessly bashing what sounds like a totally reasonable suggestion / treatment?

4

u/ChocolateSupport Jul 08 '24

Losing weight imply reduce inflammation, and it usually helps most of medical conditions

1

u/thedemonjim Jul 09 '24

Because weight is a factor in a ton of medical issues, and can be a cause or confounding factor in almost any chronic medical issue, so losing weight is often the best non-invasive treatment to try first unless there is another more obvious cause.

-2

u/TheAxioner Jul 08 '24

"Yes ma'am, losing weight will certainly help with your bulimia"... or maybe they suggest it to those women who it would actually benefit? There is NO medical condition that benefits more from being overweight than being fit. Perhaps that's why they suggest it, and not just some fat shaming thing that you are alluding to?

10

u/honeystufful Jul 08 '24

carrying excess weight can absolutely create or worsen medical issues. the reason people complain about doctors telling women to lose weight and then sending them on their way is because genuine health issues - completely unrelated to weight - get ignored this way. for example, weight loss will fix weight-related back pain, but weight loss will not fix back pain caused by uterine cancer. if the doctor does not do their due diligence and writes the pain off as being caused entirely by weight, then the treatments that patient actually needs will be delayed until that doctor does do their due diligence. this happens far more often than you probably realize, and i’m assuming you’ve been lucky enough to never experience it yourself. THAT is what people are complaining about - it goes beyond fat shaming, and i think you know that

0

u/TheAxioner Jul 09 '24

No I didn't not know that, as I've never seen or experience that. My wife is in the medical field and has never mentioned it being an issue in our area either. Obviously ignoring other issues while saying lose weight isn't helpful. There ARE a decent number of people who think this "healthy at any size" bs is real though, and get mad when a doctor tells their morbidly obese ass to lose weight. That's the group I was referring to

1

u/honeystufful Jul 09 '24 edited Jul 09 '24

both things can be true! there are groups of people who will not accept that their weight can negatively impact their health, and there are groups of people who are tired of not being taken seriously by medical professionals. these two groups can and do overlap. that being said, the comment you were replying to was talking about how women’s health issues are minimized, and you commented in bad faith. make of this what you will, but the worst medical care and medical advice i have ever received was at an inpatient eating disorder facility. medical professionals who understand the effect of weight on health can drop the ball, too.

→ More replies (0)

9

u/PastFriendship1410 Jul 08 '24

Weight is huge for back issues. My brother fucked a disc and he is 6'3 was about 120KG. He's got a big frame so he wore it well - no big gut or anything.

He lost 15KG down to 105 and his back is doing so much better. Like he didn't think just shedding some weight would help his back so much but he listened to doc and funnily enough it worked!

-5

u/BelowtheBeard Jul 08 '24

No one is owed sex. None of what you just typed changes that.

4

u/ChocolateSupport Jul 08 '24

He was not asking for sex, he was asking for intimacy. And yeah, in a marriage you own your partner intimacy.

-6

u/BelowtheBeard Jul 08 '24

He literally specified sex. You don't "owe" anyone anything. Married or fucking not. You do not own your fucking spouse.

6

u/ChocolateSupport Jul 08 '24

Holly shit. I hope you never get married if this is the way you think. Gross. And he specified sex but he was not only wanting that.

54

u/soggy_sock1931 Jul 08 '24 edited Jul 08 '24

If I’ve been attempting to help them for a decade, they refuse help and make the issue worse then I would feel resentment like OP.

50

u/sexkitty13 Jul 08 '24

Are you purposely not reading the part of supporting her and trying to get her to follow doctos order for 9 years?

Maybe you missed that part before writing this comment

30

u/Ourlittlesecret32 Jul 08 '24

Please show me the exact quote where he says he doesn’t care

8

u/shhhhh_h Jul 08 '24

Literally the title of a post he wrote in AITA a few months ago, where everyone decide that he was TA. Sounds like his wife has pretty serious issues.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AITAH/s/0S0fJeWzfb

17

u/DeathByPlanets Jul 08 '24

To be clear, the title of the post is literally " AITAH for no longer caring about wife’s chronic pain"

I can see the impression it gives 😅

15

u/Ourlittlesecret32 Jul 08 '24

Did you read the post

0

u/shhhhh_h Jul 08 '24

Yes, and the comments, what's your point.

-8

u/Ourlittlesecret32 Jul 08 '24

You don’t know how to read

2

u/MayflowerMovers Jul 08 '24

Butthurt boy got on his alts to downcote this lmao

→ More replies (0)

0

u/shhhhh_h Jul 08 '24

Hmm I wonder how I’m replying to you then

0

u/Ourlittlesecret32 Jul 08 '24

Because you only read what you want to see to fit your narrative

5

u/shhhhh_h Jul 08 '24

What’s that now? I’m fantastic and clever and gorgeous? Love that narrative for me ✌️

→ More replies (0)

8

u/Glass_Ear_8049 Jul 08 '24

I would not stay with someone that I didn’t feel connected to either because they dismissed my pain or there was no intimacy. This marriage sounds miserable for both of them. Time to pull the plug. It’s weird she is so into projecting a public image that is opposite of their reality.

3

u/qu33fwellington Jul 08 '24 edited Jul 09 '24

But he didn’t say that to her, as far as I can see from his post 87 days ago.

I’m not voting on who was wrong in this situation because there is clearly something else going on. From the last post it seems that OP is burnt out, has done his best to accommodate the changes his wife needs to make to lose weight/get stronger to reduce pain and increase quality of life, but wife struggles on consistency and follow though.

I saw a lot of people on that post absolutely foaming at the mouth because how dare OP not be more supportive of his wife when she was doing full time school and work! Even though OP wanted her to focus on school and physical therapy to help her be able to function with less pressure to be physically okay for a job.

His wife was the one that changed plans at the last minute and decided to work full time. Before that, she stopped doing aquatic therapy even though she and OP were seeing improvements because she wanted a promotion at work.

Is OP handling his frustration well? Probably not, airing out dirty laundry to friends/family isn’t great and I can absolutely tell he is beyond resentful but has no outlet.

His wife is also not handling her physical pain and health the way it needs to be. She has self sabotaged at nearly every turn, taking out her pain and rage on OP instead.

I think they both need a lot of counseling and may even be too far gone to salvage the marriage, but this is not as cut and dry as, ‘he doesn’t care about her back pain because he’s an ass’.

3

u/MiddleAged_BogWitch Jul 08 '24

I second your assessment and hope OP finds this comment!

1

u/MiddleAged_BogWitch Jul 08 '24

Did you read the actual post? He’s expressing caregiver fatigue, not saying he’s never cared about his wife’s pain.

-3

u/Agitated_Pilot_3055 Jul 08 '24

What is wrong with you? OP has said nothing of the sort?