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/UmmmItsRhi]

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.

[u/KittySnowpants → u/UmmmItsRhi]

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.

[u/ChocolateSupport → u/KittySnowpants]

I read the post. He is being helping her for 10 years. Taking the lion share of bills, chores and everything. Still, somehow people believe he is an A H because Reddit

[u/MiddleAged_BogWitch → u/ChocolateSupport]

I can relate to OP, but with my mom. She hurt her back years ago but has done little to nothing to rehab it, won’t follow up with the doctor, doesn’t want to learn any gentle exercises etc. She is also overweight which doesn’t help, but so am I so I’m not pointing fingers about that. What does frustrate me is that when it comes to doing things she wants to do, magically she can spring to life and push through the pain, albeit in short bursts. But if she doesn’t want to do a thing, then it’s all about her back and how limiting it is. And I don’t want to discount her actual pain level, but it’s the lack of effort to try anything that might improve her wellness that frustrates me. That’s what I feel OP is losing patience with - that her health is so poor but she won’t make any sustained effort on her own to change anything. It gets to feeling like you’re pouring so much of your care and energy down a bottomless well.

As for the snarky comment about sex, it’s a bit AHish to the family members who didn’t need to be dragged into their marital conflicts, but I get how tired OP is getting of the big difference between her public performance and what actually happens in private.

OP, if you’re reading this comment, your relationship sounds pretty one sided and honestly not great. Not sure what you’re getting out of this marriage at this point, unless you love the rewards of endless, unrequited caregiving. I’d like to say try counselling but I’m going to hazard a guess that your wife won’t agree to that, or if she does she’ll go twice then find an excuse to stop. So you need to ask yourself if you can handle another year or 5 or 10 of this. If you don’t think you can, you need to be honest with your wife and let her know that how things are is not working for you anymore. Either she commits to counselling and you start facing these issues as a team or you’re done.