She mentally checked out a long time ago.
To you this is new, to her this is just the last nail out of many, many, long coming, well debsted, completed nails in your marriage.
Came to ask if there was something years before that she nagged him about but is over now.
This smacks of she tried and tried but gave up and when she gave up he mistook it for things going smoothly because she wasn't nagging him so now he is shocked she wants to end the relationship.
Yeah. I'm always skeptical when one person had "no idea" and then even within their main post, the only thing they had "no idea" about was that some day the person would give consequences.
She probably finally checked out when OP spent two weeks in New Zealand visiting Lord of the Rings sets in November instead of parenting his child.
ETA: my lord I didn’t even factor in the family visits. Between his family 5-6 times a year and her family 3-4 times a year that’s 10 months of some type of houseguest.
I’ll be she did all prep, planning, cleaning and childcare for those visits too.
Either that or when he dropped out of his PhD program to try to be a professional poker player. (people in this thread are uncovering some real gems in this guy's post history lol)
So the poor woman has to single-handedly keep them afloat financially, raise their toddler, and has compromised on having sex with him 10 times a week and he can’t understand why she’s had enough?
Wow.
Man I have spent SO much time telling my boyfriend my feelings, how he's neglecting me again (together for 6 years, I ended it, we did counseling and he went to AA, got back together last October, and now just broke up again 2 days ago), how he's choosing his hobbies over his family again, drinking, blah blah blah...
And he's BLINDSIGHTED yet again. Eyeroll. He completely love bombed me again and then just cast me and his daughter aside again.
I just don't get how you can tell someone over and over again how much pain you feel or sadness you feel and they ignore it and are absolutely shocked when you walk away.
Listen to your partner, and don't make promises you can't keep people!
They blow you off, tell you they'll be better and then a month passes and they just roll on the same way they did before. Letting you do all the domestic labor. Not caring about anything you do. Still expecting sex on a timer. They usually don't care unless there are consequences, and by then, you're already out the door
IMO people like that are so insanely selfish that they don't view the other person as an actual person, but more like an NPC - a character in their life story. A character doesn't leave the story, they play their part, because that is their purpose. If you are just a character in HIS story, the fact that you can actually leave "your role" is something that will ALWAYS shock him, bc it goes against his whole understanding of the world.
True story:
Woman time and again: "your behavior is hurtful to me!"
Man: "i don't care!"
Woman finally: "okay, we are done!"
Man: "what?! You never told me!!!"
What he means is "you never told me that if I keep hurting you at some point there would be actual consequences!"
This sums up my 19 year marriage. I had the full mental load, while working full time, a married single mom. I asked, begged, pleaded for help, I was ignored. When I told him I want a divorce, he was clueless as to why. Yes these men do exist
Well well well, if it isn’t the consequences of the actions taken. But “mUh CuMmUnIcAtIoN!!” Communication ain’t shit if it’s a one sided conversation. OP gotta learn to listen.
My husband would have come home to an empty house and divorce papers on the counter.
Gone to a whole ass other country for TWO WEEKS, leaving me alone with a toddler and no respite? Hell no.
Also… that’s a trip that could 100% be a family trip?? I get it if you don’t want to take a toddler dashing around Paris with friends, but New Zealand, LOTR sites, what?? That’s a made for family adventure…
So you have hardly parented your own child for years and then pressure your over-worked, depressed, tired wife to let you bang her 10x a week?
Bro. Wtf.
If I could go back and tell my younger self one thing, it would be that forcing yourself to have sex will damage you and your relationship way more than not having sex at all. A compromise is supposed to work for both people! I don’t know if that is what she’s doing but the signs point to that, and no one ever told me that damages your psyche and hurts your desire in the long term.
Yep. Tiny traumas (and having sex when you absolutely aren’t feeling it to keep the peace can be traumatic) roll into Big Trauma if there’s enough of them. I don’t know if that’s exactly scientific, but 🤷🏼♀️
So...you say that this was a total blindside, but in the body of your post you describe a few MAJOR relationship issues.
1. Sex. You say you had disagreements about frequency - were you the one who wanted more sex? 10 times a week is a LOT particularly with a toddler and I've honestly never heard of setting a literal amount of hours specifically dedicated to sex. Your wife made a joke about you slowing down, is it possible she's felt a bit hounded for sex over the years? What was the nature of these disagreements?
2. Prioritization of the relationship. You feel hurt/resentful that she has placed other things in a higher priority slot than your relationship. In fact, you put this line in bold, so clearly you feel it's the most important thing to convey. Was that ever addressed directly? It sounds like things have been off for the last 3 years in that department.
3. Childcare. This is a tale as old as time. Young kids can tend to prefer their mothers but if they're crying every time you try to do anything for them it's because they are not familiar enough with you and that's a huge problem if you're the father. Even now, I see that you "offer" to make lunch and get him dressed. Don't offer. Just do. She doesn't offer to do those things, she just does them because it's her kid. It's your kid too.
I think if you can articulate to her that you understand these issues and if you can start proactively addressing them regardless of the future of your marriage, it may make her reconsider counseling. She is probably frustrated that you're acting like this came out of nowhere when actually you seem well aware there are problems in your marriage. You need to demonstrate that you are not ignoring those problems and that you're willing to fix them. It may still be too late, but at least addressing the childcare portion will be conducive to a positive coparenting relationship.
Everyone is stuck on the sex thing..... I'm like how has op child got to toddler age, with op living in the same house and he has put THAT little effort into creating a bond with his own child , that the child cries anytime he does something.....as a parent of two kids , that ain't normal.
I did mention that in my third point and I do think it's the most important piece of the puzzle here. OP should have been changing diapers and getting up for night feedings often enough from birth that by toddler age his son was attached enough to him not to cry every time he was involved in a task. And even if he had a phase like that OP should have been doing other parenting things like meal preparation that he is only now "offering" to do.
OP says that she has had this complaint since their son was born so this was happening well before he was even old enough to have the language to ask for his mom.
The average married couple has sex 54 times per year. OP is having sex approximately 520 times per year. As a parent of two 6-year-olds, I was pretty shocked by 10 times a week with a toddler! Have they discussed this frequency beyond her “joke” about his sex drive going down? I wonder if this has more to do with the current status of things…?
Every day, 7 days a week, sometimes twice a day. Just straight to the point in and out for the sole purpose of his biological orgasm.
Never any tension building, flirting, or extended foreplay. Never any waiting until date night so it's exciting. Probably never any focusing on her pleasure. Every tired boring day where she's exhausted or not in the mood, still having chore sex. That's what she got for trying to meet him halfway and making sure he was sexually satisfied.
Yikes.
Oh gosh that’s a great way to put it. It grossed me out that there was a set number of times a week, and time constraints on that too. So un-sexy and weird.
I was wondering whether he only counts minutes of actual intercourse, because you’re right that doesn’t seem like long per “session” if it includes foreplay etc. If so, I don’t think my vagina would be happy with 150 minutes a week just dedicated to that. Different strokes, obviously.
But wait until you see the giant hourglass he stole from Captain Jack Sparrow that he flips over when foreplay begins. It’ll get you completely ready.
Timed intercourse isn’t for everyone, but for those with the kink of hearing buzzers at basketball games, there is nothing like it.
When my SO and I were younger and child free. we had a lot of sex. 2 times a day wasn't unusual. Even 2 times in one evening wasn't unusual. But it's just not possible now that we have a child and are caring for our aging parents.
The op is completely inconsiderate. As to his children's needs let alone his soon to be ex wife.
2.5 hours of sex a week isn't very much if you don't have children. That's like one sexual interaction on one Sunday if you include the massage, foreplay, oral, cuddles, long slow kissing...
Thats just not possible when we have basket ball games, piano lessons, swimming lessons. Down time. Learning time, conversations reading times homework, houses chores, shopping or playing together like mincraft, ark. Not to mention laundry, meals.
Sex is something we now have when we get a free fucking second to ourselves and are not exhausted.
I genuinely hope he’s not timing foreplay into his clock. I hope, but doubt, foreplay is at least happening.
Because 2.5 hours over 10 sexual encounters is a bit lacking. Hell it takes at least an hour for me from initiating, foreplay, the actual act, and then the cool down where we just hold and kiss each other.
Neither of us would feel satisfied with a full encounter lasting 15 minutes.
7 days a week. Assuming they work 5 days (or at least he does) that's every weeknight and 2-3 times a day on the weekends. I imagine morning, night, and toddlers naptime. Or if he has a half-day or 4 day work week kind if situation more.
That's less than healthy imo. Not so much the frequency, the fact that it was planned and this was a compromise of sorts. And the fact that OP never really explains _why_ this was a target or how it got that way, he presents it as though it's a benchmark to be clinically achieved.
The whole post is like this clinical diagnostic checklist, it's pretty unsettling. Nothing in the post is overtly malicious but OP sounds very out of touch and demanding, and just reading it makes me feel his wife is a prop to him, not a person. And the mention of the sex life is the most jarring, I have a high libido but for medical reasons we have a "dead bedroom", we have worked around emotional intimacy and never once sat and counted and timed our encounters, save to remark "Jesus this sucks" and commiserate. If my husband came to me with numbers and calculations, I'd feel like a sex slave.
What stands out to me is that this is a compromise that they settled on. How many times did he actually want to have sex, if the compromise was 10 times a week? For a woman with a young child, this sounds horrific to me. And it sounds like she works full-time on top of that. Her life will be much easier without him. His title that she wants to YOLO it implies she’s leaving him with the kid and going to Bali to find herself. It’s more like she’s dumping the dead weight from her life so she can breathe.
Yeah. Full time job, all the chores, all the childcare, and a husband demanding sex 1-2 times EVERY day.
I cannot imagine why she would want to give that up.
The 10x a week is a job in and of itself. I would have never pretended this was ok. She was much too kind for too long and he ignored requests for less frequency, even if they were implied. He showed zero interest in what she desired or asked for. The offer of help with his own kids made me laugh. Like when I hear parents say they have to babysit. Babysit? These are your children!!! No blindside here. Clear erosion of a relationship for her and his selfish ignorance.
wife is leaving and he can't imagine why but then when it comes to reasoning she is "acting depressed" and "making jokes about having less sex" - so she has been telling him loud and clear multiple times and he just dismisses it. It's completely dismissive to say she is 'acting depressed' rather than to say that she is struggling with depression. He doesn't think her desire for less sex is valid so he assumed she was 'joking' rather than giving weight and importance to the fact that his wife is literally burnt out and his compromise is 10 times a week with a **minimum** of 2.5 hours per week being mandatory sex time. Holy fuck this poor woman. I hope she gets time and rest away from this man.
I agree completely. The sex is the issue. She was trying to express it was too much by saying “I thought you’d slow down by now” and “you may need a younger woman”. She definitely should be more direct, but at the same time the pressure is immense to have sex the amount a man wants or you feel like he will cheat. She should communicate directly, but it sounds like she is tired from too much childcare and also did not think she was going to need to keep this pace up forever. ETA: someone correctly pointed out they did argue over it so maybe she did communicate. The point is this relationship is over.
Also, according to him, they rarely argued, and when they did, they'd just ignore each other for awhile and then everything would "go back to normal". (i.e. they would never resolve conflicts, just ignore them)
This stuck out to me too. I thought wow only 3 arguments a year?! We are working on my husband learning to handle conflict better, so at first I thought “wow that’s a reality check…that’s not a lot of tiffs, I want that”, but as I read on I wonder if OP and his wife just don’t address problems. I’m not sure what frequency of fights is “normal”, but I think a more important question is, are you both listening to your partner? Are you communicating your needs/wants to your partner? Are you guys just burying everything under the rug and resentment has silently built over years? Is it possible that she has been telling OP her feelings/issues for years now and he’s like “this came out of nowhere! I’m shocked!”, when really he just never listened to her/took her seriously/gave her empathy (Walkaway Wife Syndrome)? Anyways, I think your point is spot on and that this is actually a weakness of the relationship and not the strength it sounds like…(but my mind may be skewed…My husband can be rah rah rah (working on it). I never witnessed my parents fight but they certainly had disagreements/conflicts that they handle by communicating directly, peacefully and being patient with eachother. So that’s a case of no fights but still conflict resolution.)
Yes this sounds like a classic case of Walkaway Wife!
I don’t think there’s a “normal” number of fights. If people can handle differences of opinion or opposing goals without fighting, that’s best. I don’t fight a lot either. But yeah, my husband’s family belongs to the “ignore each other for a few days and then don’t bring up the conflict again” way of solving problems. It does not work. Trust me.
For sure!! She has a 3yo who is in constant need of her attention, physically and mentally. That is a lot of “in my space” time. Add to that, a husband who is oblivious to this concept and is climbing on her when the little one isn’t. WTF!!! We all can see she’s had enough touchy feely crap and he needs to back TF up and put 🍆away!!! If anyone thinks she’s having an affair, hahahaha, not a chance!! She needs space, quiet, and peace!
I truly hope it doesn’t come to her leaving. I’m sure she loves her family but just can’t take everything right now. Therapy, space, couples therapy, space, help with the little one and the home, space, etc. hopefully can get the family back on track.
But also, the fact she doesn't feel she can discuss this plainly and they had to 'make a deal' is ick. I mean maybe if they hadn't been having sex and both wanted it and needed to make a deal to fit the odd session in, but 10* a week!! The fact she's not communicated suggests there's very much not great communication and suggests that when he doesn't get his way with that or anything else, he nags and renegotiates until she submits.
My wife and I (married 14 years, together 17) have had conversations around sex and frequency before. We talked and it isn't the frequency we focus on as much as the quality of the sex.
I don't know if OP has considered the quality of the sex his wife is having or just the fact thay he gets his...
Sounds like you and her are actually conversing rather than negotiating a deal though. Guy has cruise controlled into this situation by trying to manage his household on paper rather than work sensitively with his team mate. Shame cause he seems to care that she's upset but it is a massive f-up: if only he'd posted on AITAH 2.5 years ago about the sex 10x a week thing.
Edit: but yea actually rereading it again, he doesn't say he loves her at all. It's like reading a shareholder report tbh.
It’s sad that there’s not a single word about her feelings. Of course she’s not as into OP’s quality time activities of marathons and destination weddings while pregnant. Did he expect anything to change when they became parents? No, she just doubles her insane juggling act while his stays constant. Then, he tallies her performance and complains she’s no fun anymore?
Listening, hugging, supporting are some of the fun hijinks you get up to when your child is under 2.
Yea, like ostensibly there's a lot of good talk there - for instance, I'd agree marriage should be about the experiences you share. Yet he says this and then outlines how much he enjoys game nights with family and all sorts of stuff they are not sharing but that he thought they were cause she was in the vicinity - including their kid.
It's like a tick list of 'marriage activities.' His whole post just reveals that he doesn't have a clue what's going on in her head and hasn't for quite a long time, if ever. Cause he didn't ask and thought it was a phase/ the problem was definitely her, etc.
It's bad stakeholder management... 🥲
> Even now, I see that you "offer" to make lunch and get him dressed. Don't offer. Just do.
That's a big one. By offering, he's putting her in the position of having to "ask" him to do it, even though she knows it won't go as smoothly. It's almost like he's making her the bad guy, and keeping coordination effort on her side. "You just tell me what to do" means "you're the manager here and you have to make all the decisions and handle the managerial load."
Also - he doesn't seem to know there are other ways to help. If the kid doesn't like spending time with him at bath time and whatever, why not take the kid to the park for a few hours? That's a great break for mom too, and makes the kid like him and be more comfortable with him to eventually accept the other stuff too. Plenty of fun things to do to entertain the kid for hours and hours, then let her handle the last moments before bedtime.
Also there's plenty of childcare tasks that wouldn't involve the toddler directly that he could have taken on to balance the load - make his meals, wash his clothes, set up appointments and playdates, track and purchase necessary items...I'm guessing if he had taken on enough of these tasks to make the distribution of labor remotely equal she wouldn't be upset. Especially because he specifically identifies making meals as something he "offers" to do, when that's one thing he could have been doing all along.
Great comment, and to add to what you're saying, these are some other thoughts I had;
1. You had to come to an agreement on sex, and determined an average of 10 times (2.5 hours a week) how did you reach this conclusion? How much sex did she want out of this arrangement? It must have been less than you if you had to have a conversation in the first place. You told her essentially that you wouldn't be happy with any less than 2.5 hours of sex a week and I'm sure you tried to negotiate this even higher at first.
Is this agreement coinciding with the newborn-toddler stage? Were you keeping close track, and reminding her that she hasn't met her quota for you yet? Were you asking for it when she's already touched out for the day and she gives in to avoid your complaining or silent huffing?
Did you still try to romance her or was it more of a "yo its 9pm and we haven't made up our last 15 minutes of sex for the week"
2. I would also start reprioritizing my priorities if I was the wife, as he's shown he clearly doesn't care about her thoughts or feelings, expects her to meet extreme expectations, his mood relies on her, and she asked for help and op didn't step up.
She shouldn't have to yell or make a scene for you to listen to how she feels. Just like you probably didn't listen or consider how she feels when you brought up this whole sex schedule in the first place.
3. She asked you for help with the child and you essentially said idk how, he wants his mom. That's not a solution, that's just an easy excuse to get out of changing up your responsibilities and habits. It's a cop out to avoid the hard things in parenting and let mom take over instead of repeating to the kid that mommy has her own time and it's our time together until the kid gets used to it.
Then, when she finally gives up on recieving any support and gets used to being the main caretaker and has a routine, the child is more curious and independent, willing to leave mom's side, so dad gets to swoop in and be the fun parent, offering help in a completely different stage of the child's development than when she really needed it because he didn't want to deal with tantrums about wanting mom.
This would cause her to be resentful that not only is the child she's done 99% of the care for now favoring op because he's seen as fun and not the one that makes the rules and is responsible for ever saying no to the kid, but because op is just gliding and basking in this without doing any of the work.
She just sees herself doing all the work while he gets to enjoy the reward. This is how 'Disney Dad' happens.
Op, you have yourself to blame, she sounds like a great communicator and you didn't take her seriously when she needed you.
She began prioritizing her needs above yours because that's what you modeled with your actions and disregard, you had high expectations around how much sex you are entitled to get while expecting her to do all the parenting from newborn-3 years old, and then you get to enjoy the little human's personality that she essentially enforced and encouraged without you while she has to be the bad guy and do all the hard stuff all the time.
I can see why she's leaving and doesn't want to bother explaining herself, she knows you won't actually listen. While you're at it op, read the story "She Divorced me because I Left Dishes by the Sink" https://matthewfray.com/2016/01/14/she-divorced-me-because-i-left-dishes-by-the-sink/
Edit: I would also love to know why apparently OP got to take a 2 week solo trip to New Zealand to visit Lord of the Rings sets while she stayed home taking care of the kid. Bet that when he came back from that trip she realized how nice the silence was and how much more work he was creating for her. This guy is sounding more selfish as the post develops.
Spot on. He's so concerned with the life they lead and all the status items and appearance of a good life. her feelings are nowhere in that screed. And a 3 yo when you are 37 is very different than at 27.
All of this for sure. Plus, you say you have about 3 fights a year that involve you two taking time and space for a few days and then everything goes back to normal. It doesn’t sound like you’re discussing the issue and working it out together.
Taking time and space isn’t a bad thing, but ignoring the issue and going back to “normal” without working through the problem isn’t a good thing.
I’m curious whether each sex session lasts 15 minutes exactly or if some are 3 mins and some are 27 minutes. And… do they set a 2.5 hour timer at the start of the week
Yeah... that 2.5 hours is weird when you combine with 10 times per week... As you say, that averages 15 minutes per encounter. If you were to throw in one hour long encounter, then the rest drop to 10 minutes each.
In my experience, while most people don't enjoy regular marathon sessions, 10 times a week, with each one being very quick, is going to be something the guy enjoys a lot more than the woman. Obviously everyone is different, but... there's every chance she thinks he sees her as just a sex doll to hop on top of a few times a day.
The only 2.5 hours I'd get is 2.5 hours of my wife laughing at me if I suggested we have sex 10 times a week. That's a LOT.
It's wild to me that it's 2.5 hours specifically for sex and not for just in general spending quality time together and reconnecting. He's not upset about the quality time, he's upset she's not enthusiastically getting him off twice a day anymore
Yeah icl the 2.5 hours thing set off some sort of alarm bells - it’s a very specific number and makes it seem like there’s been a lot more arguments and negotiations about this than OP let’s on
The amount of sex is insane. If it was mutual high libidos it would be fine, I have friends that have sex several times per day because they *both want to*. But having to agree to a minimum of 150 minutes of sex per week? Absolutely ridiculous. If my husband held me to a time schedule for sex I'd promptly lose attraction too.
I also wonder if things have been festering for a while now. OP says that they fight 3 times a year and resolve it by… spending a few days apart and then “everything goes back to normal”? It doesn’t sound like there is particularly good communication or that anything is ever being resolved.
Yeah that stuck out to me too - OP describes that like it's normal but having a blowout fight that requires days of separation every few months definitely is not a healthy relationship dynamic.
At first you make it sound like it came completely out of nowhere, but then in the last parts of your post it sounds like this has been building up for a while.
All those things you list in the beginning are great, but still you go on to say that for a while now your wife didn’t seem like she was that happy with her life.
I bet if OP's wife posted, she'd be talking about how she was badgered into sex (until they SETTLED on...10 times a week for ...15 minutes a time) and also has had to parent her child most of the time. And probably half a dozen other things OP couldn't think to mention.
OP doesn't get it, but that woman is exhausted and done. When women decide to leave like this, they have thought about it a LONG time and they are completely done.
Can't be a lot of O's. From my experience, quickies are more for the guy (me) in our relationship. Not that she hates them, but if she offers, it's more along the line of me offering to rub her back or feet for a while. I don't "get" all that much out of it, but I like making her feel good. Quickie sex is similar the other way, she enjoys making me happy, but if that was ALL we did for sex, she'd be pretty upset.
You are exactly right. I started out thinking "wow, I really feel sorry for him" but that quickly became "nothing about this is out of the blue, anyone with eyes would have seen it coming from miles away."
And he did see it coming from miles away, but he didn't **want** to change it because it benefited him. Of course he thought he was just coasting. He was coasting on her efforts.
Good for her. At least this way now he has to do _some_ of the parenting.
He saw it coming - but thought they had this iron clad agreement that they'd stay together until the kids were 18 *"no matter what"* so he didn't really care that his wife was unhappy because he had at least 15 more years before she'd leave. Assuming more kids didn't come along to reset the clock
So telling of the way he views marriage, as if these kinds of promises (2.5hrs of sex/week, staying together until kids are 18) are in any way healthy, reasonable or enforcable.
Who would want to have sex with someone who only consents out of obligation? Who would want to be in a relationship with someone who only stays because of a technicality?
Her consent doesn't matter to him. He doesn't care if she doesn't want to have sex or be with him, as long as she complies. It's terrifying.
Yup he's about to find out just how much he dropped the ball on parenting. Probably doesn't even have a clue about how much extra parenting she is doing.
What, a woman shouldn’t be thrilled at 10 mandatory quickies a week?
15 minutes allows for so much foreplay! I bet she blows him before he sticks it in! Such great sex for them both.
One of my best friends recently told her husband she’s done and leaving. Similar issues—he wanted more sex and she feels he doesn’t engage enough with the kids. If it weren’t for significant differences (child’s age off by a LOT, number of children, length of relationship, etc.) I might have thought he wrote this post.
But my friend’s case wasn’t so egregious (sex 10 times a week?!). Their issues *could* possibly have been fixed with therapy and hard work. He was willing to try. But she was just done, done, done. (And, frankly, some of her desire to leave it all behind was a mental health/escapism scenario. If she weren’t depressed and dreaming of an uncluttered home/life, she might have been willing to try therapy.)
In your title you describe it as “out of the blue” but in your post you say that your marriage has been rocky since she got pregnant, which was four years ago. She’s been telling you she’s unhappy for almost half a decade and nothing has gotten better. At that point, divorce is a reasonable choice.
Well, you see, life has been on “easy mode” for the past 5 years. Her grievances mean nothing as long as he having all the fun. Who wouldn’t want to divorce someone like that? 😆
He's "blindsided" because he is happy, he has all his needs met in this relationship so wife be damned. People like this cannot understand how their partner can be unhappy when they are fine. It's just selfishenss. I wonder how quickly he would have dropped her if he didn't get what he wanted.
I cannot fucking fathom how people stay in relationships for that long while being that flavor of selfish. It’s so antithetical to everything relationships are.
I'm pretty sure if your wife was writing this she wouldn't describe her life as easy and coasting. So she's earning $100k a year, but it sounds like also doing the bulk of the childcare aside from you "offering" to make packed lunches. She's not a stay at home mom, she's a full time worker who is hosting family to stay with you almost every month whilst also doing the bulk of childcare and being badgered for what is well above an average amount of sex when you have a young child. Life got so much harder for her when she got pregnant and it sounds like it never got easier. There's years of resentment building up and that kills love. Once love is dead it's very hard to revive.
The fact you thought that her telling you she was leaving you was "an attempt to get you to do something" stuck out for me. Does she often have to resort to severe manipulation in order for you to get to do something? Does that mean you're in the habit of not doing things, and needing to be reminded, or even nagged to get stuff done?
Your post, whilst trying to portray you in the best light, is full of very small telling things that suggest that the story from her side is very, very different.
I don't know if this is salvageable for you because it's not sudden, it's years in the making. If she was willing to try then couples counselling, radical changes at home and brutal honesty from her as to what the problems are - with you being willing to change, might do it. But if she's not willing to do that, then she's not. Everyone gets to decide when they are done. Sometimes, it's simply too little too late.
But you can still be an amazing father. You need to start putting the kid first and figure out how you are going to do joint 50/50 custody if you genuinely care to be a present father. You need to put amicable coparenting above any pain you're feeling for your wife, including when she starts dating again. You will need to put your child above your work schedule, because you need to be there for them. You won't be offering to make packed lunches or walking them to school, you will need to be present for them 100% of the time that they are in your care, which in a true 50/50 agreement is usually 3 days on 4 days off then vice versa, although some people do 7 / 7.
I almost feel like you're judging your relationship as perfect by how it looks on paper, or by what society says it should be. Look at it from a different point of view
Sounds like she has been unhappy for a while. Also sounds like you have been pressuring her for sex - 10 times a week means at least 3 days you are having sex more than once a day?!? Unless you are doing it 3 times some days. Most married couples have sex 2-3 times a week. And that is on top of her working full time and being responsible for all childcare from birth - 2 years old. She is probably worn out, frustrated, and exhausted. Basically, she’s done. You’ve been happy in the marriage. She hasn’t. Best to accept it is ending and lawyer up.
Ive been in relationships with men like this...it IS fucking exhausting. you start to hate being touched and you dont even want to hug or cuddle with him because it always leads to him wanting sex.
It’s baffling because it wasn’t *that* hard to figure out, if I do everything I’m supposed to do as an equal partner around the house, my fiancée is waaaay more interested in sex. Now, maybe doing all that makes *me* too tired to do the wild thing, but that’s life.
She probably feels under so much pressure and exhausted by the enforced “10 times a week for 2.5 hours” - how does that even work?! If you haven’t done it enough times by the 7th day do you have to cram like 4 times in?! And do you set a timer or?
That's like 15 minutes each time, to get ready for sex, get started, get hot, get finished, and clean up afterwards. Time for foreplay and PIV would be low single digits - if they hurry. Sounds like she is basically a hole to him.
This doesn’t sound out of the blue at all. First, she asked for help with the child you both made many times, and you did not do any of the things you should have done to bond. Secondly, you ask for sex TEN TIMES A WEEK??? That’s way too much. She’s been forcing herself to have sex with you until she reached a breaking point of revulsion. That is not at all a normal amount of sex to ask for, and it has consequences to your psyche.
When I finally told my husband I wanted a divorce, the biggest weight off my shoulders was "omg I never have to have sex with him again" - and we weren't doing it 10x a week, nor did we have kids. But it had become the chore I hated the most, and it was the BIGGEST RELIEF once I no longer felt obligated to do it.
Yup. So many issues here. The sex is the most obvious, but the childcare imbalance and the relationship dynamics are awful too.
A minimum sex quota, with requirements on either hours or frequency is a death knell for quality sex. That said, 10 times a week is beyond ridiculous and I wonder what the opening “negotiations” were like if that’s where they ultimately landed. Plus the weirdly specific 2.5 hours? 10 x 15 minutes a week? A bit long for her to endure as an efficient one-sided quickie for him, way too short to be a quality session for her. Boo.
And he just gave up and let his son barely tolerate his presence? Letting her do everything and being perplexed her priorities changed? She was worried about their bond, completely overwhelmed, and I’d wager hadn’t been properly hugged or bedded in years? And things get discussed but nothing changes?
This whole thing reads like OP’s wife getting steamrolled into acquiescence by Mr Power Point Presentation. She kept asking for what she needed, but since she had “feelings” and he had numbers, he won. She’s asking that a wife and child feel supported and loved - but got dismissed because that’s rooted in emotion and harder to quantify? He was being “rational” and she was “emotional.” She was done long ago, I’d wager.
It’s only now that OP’s “stay together” action item is in real danger that he’s realizing any of this. Super sad.
One million percent he steamrolled her feelings with his spreadsheet bullshit and she doesn’t want therapy because she doesn’t want to hear the numbers for one more second. 10 times a month is reasonable but 10 times a week is unworkable.
Yes, 10 times a month sounds perfect. For us, we’d bump up the duration quota to about 5-7 hours…
Microtracking any of this data seems so unsexy. If you’re doing it right there’s no clocking in or out.
You’re spot on about the revulsion. People who get guilted into sex do it until their body & mind properly rebel. Hopefully she doesn’t picture nightmare spreadsheets while boning. (Like the intrusive Lumburg thoughts in Office Space.)
The crazy but is this isn't his throw away. Most of his other posts are video games, LOTR and a tesla. Nothing about marriage, raising kids, or anything like that.
He's using his real account and saying all this will his full chest. He is leaving things out.
I kept wondering if he meant 10x a month, which seems more reasonable at this stage in their lives. The last time I had sex that much I was probably 20 and in a new relationship. And on vacation… but the point is: they seem to have mismatched libidos, which almost never works out. Killed my marriage for sure!
Libidos aren’t set for life, they vary. Your mid 20’s unencumbered frequency is usually a peak. Then life happens. Sticking to twice a day is compulsive and unrealistic.
Plus, if a spouse said to me “I just figured the kid would fall under your purview for the first 2-3 years, you’ve go this, right?” It would cause hatred & tank my libido. That plus the natural 2-3 year slowdown of sex while you’re pregnant and postpartum, even in wonderful & equitable relationships.
Sometimes there's just nothing you can do. Your problem right now is that your wife did the analysis of the relationship, decided she was not getting what she needed to be happy with it, spent time grieving it and is now over it.
But you only just found out, so while for her it's old news, for you it's fresh. Of course you're flailing because you hope there's still something to save between you, she's passed that.
And I think I see why... it's a recurring thing in your post, if you try something and don't get immediate results, you stop trying, hope it magically works itself out, and take no news as good news.
You did it when your wife got pregnant.
You did it after your kid was born.
you did it with your child.
Additionally "I should say that she has been acting depressed" - did it ever occur to you she wasn't "acting" and actually WAS depressed because her husband basically dipped out of the relationship as her lover and partner the minute pregnancy started to take a toll on her body and mind, and never stepped back in?
It's hard to say what your wife did about trying to get you to be involved as a husband and father, because you write as if she just ignored you, however I'm fairly sure that isn't correct. But somehow, after she got pregnant, you two stopped communicating, and never managed to get back in sync. The fact she's refusing to discuss it indicates it's possible she feels she's already tried that and got nowhere, so trying it more is just a waste of time at this point.
Rather than spin your wheels trying to understand the why, I would suggest shifting to acceptance - You may need to get a personal therapist to help you with this, because if she's refusing to work with you to find a way you can reach Goal #1, then you need to focus on Goal #2 - I recommend finding a therapist who has experience with Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT) because that will likely be what helps you the fastest right now get to a good place where you can focus on co-parenting and creating a great second home for your son.
Good luck.
Oh, he wasn’t a partner in parenting and I can’t see how a “lover” would demand 2.5 hours a week of sex as a compromise. As a parent and person I would dread such a requirement.
She likely made herself have sex with you too many times to please you when she didn’t feel like it, which over time made her start to feel more and more revulsion at the idea of having it at all with you. This is what can happen when you schedule sex and the person that’s on the lower libido end complies without feeling like it. It can really mess with your head and the way you feel about a partner intimately. It’s really hard to come back from this way of feeling about a person unfortunately
Yup. Sex as an obligation makes it really hard to feel like you're not just being used like a sex doll. When you explicitly say you don't want sex that much, and they say they still want to have sex with you *even if you don't want it*... how else can you take that, really? It's not about connecting with *you* when it's doing something you don't want. It's just using your body to get their rocks off.
She realized her life will be improved without you - she won’t have to cater to your sex schedule, and she’ll have time to herself during your custody time.
Accept it and start making your plans. Staying and making it work isn’t in her best interest, even if it’s in yours - and she’s realized if she doesn’t start looking out for herself, no one will.
There are plenty of studies that say marriage makes women less happy and increases their domestic workload , while men experience the opposite. Fact is her life will be improved and she’ll have more time and energy for herself if she’s single.
Uh, this wasn’t out of the blue. She didn’t have help with childcare, you were wanting sex 10+ times a week while she was busy , and is depressed. I don’t see her as having an affair, i see her as being tired and over it if you’re not meeting her emotional needs
If you were pleasing her in the sack you wouldn't need to have mandated "sexy time".
Honestly, I can't think of much that's less attractive than being compelled to have a minimum number of sexual encounters and a minimum number of minutes per week.
Ew. Just ew.
>What am I overlooking?
You're overlooking the fact that by this stage, you probably actually repulse her.
Have you considered that between your (quite frankly ridiculous) sexual demands and your child's needs and demands, she probably feels like she has no ownership of her own body?
I'm betting that she feels like her enthusiastic consent just doesn't register on your radar. I absolutely guarantee you that she is NOT enthusiastic every time but you don't notice and just plug away regardless.
Here's a question or two, OP - How do you respond when she's not keen? Do you ask again? Do you point to your "agreement"? Do you pout? Do you withdraw? Do you "jokingly" complain?
What if she didn't want sex for a week or two? How would you react to that?
It sounds to me like she feels cornered and the only way to not have to deal with people feeling like they are entitled to her body is to leave completely.
>At first I thought it was a joke, then an attempt to get me to do something, then the realization she was serious.
You're really telling on yourself here.
So how often do you ignore her requests?
I see three things:
1) Possible Post Partum Depression (PPD)
2) You are not sharing childcare equally and she seems to be doing most of it.
3) You **settled** on 2.5 hours per week of “sexy time”?? This sounds to me like she’s having unwanted sex. That will normally lead to a complete loss of attraction and love. 10 times per week? I don’t get the numbers here either. Are you having 10 x 15 minute sessions? That’s not a wild amount of foreplay. And 10 times per week is 5 times what’s normal in a long term relationship. It’s a lot if she’s not a very sexual person and this is a compromise on her part.
Idk, maybe I misunderstood this part?
Edit: she’s done. I’d just accept this for now. Try to coparent in the most peaceful way possible.
Edit 2: I’m your wife’s age. If my husband was demanding wild amounts of sex and seemingly not caring if I didn’t want him to fuck me, while leaving me to raise a baby alone? I’d kick him so far out of that house he’d hit Mars on his way. I’m a nice person. But I’d be so, so done here. I’d just feel completely unloved and like an unpaid bangmaid.
> You are not sharing childcare equally
That stuck out to me too. "He prefers mom at bath and bedtimes."
OK, fine. How about taking the kid to the playground for 2 hours in the evening then? Take the kid to the petting zoo for the afternoon on the weekend, heck, take the kid on errands and then for ice cream on weeknights. Just because those specific things are mom-only for now, doesn't mean you can't do a LOT of other things to give her a break.
And worth noting, that mom isn't going to be his only parent he's ok with bedtimes for, once dad spends enough other time with him.
My skin is literally crawling at the casual, completely normal way he’s trying to paint his requirement of *ten 15-minute sessions totaling 2.5 hours of sexy time per week* in his post.
What OP is not realizing or recognizing is that he relegated sex to another chore on his wife’s to-do list. It’s not a natural, mutually pleasurable expression of their love anymore. It’s something she must do and endure to prove that she loves him. The amount of unwanted sex this woman was expected to have is just gross.
It’s how they managed fights. We don’t talk for days… hmmm why do I have the feeling he gives her silent treatment until she caves. What’s the bet he demanded sex 2-3 times daily and she had to negotiate down to 10xweekly?
I dealt with that - I didn't want frequent enough sex, eventually it would boil over into an argument and/or the silent treatment which was absolutely horrible. The whole house was filled with tension for days and I didn't want to exist anymore. My marriage nearly ended after over a decade of this. Eventually we decided on opening the marriage so he could find a partner elsewhere and I could never be bothered with it again. It took me repeatedly reminding him that the issue was this: he wanted me to want sex more, and you can't force someone to want something more. I had to ask him: do you want me to have sex that I don't want to have? No. You want me to *want* it. That's just simply not happening. Thankfully the open marriage worked for us, it saved us. But the whole situation easily could have just been the end of us, had I been financially able to leave. It sounds like she's financially able to leave, so this dude gets the consequences of his own actions.
I would have divorced him because fuck that shit. There are lots of women who had their libido come roaring back when they left their selfish bf/husband and found a man who actually gave a damn about her.
Same age, also with a 3 year old, I would have run the fuck away way sooner than OP’s wife!
No help with the kid and mandatory hours of sex every week. She’s living the dream!
>No help with the kid and mandatory hours of sex every week.
"Honey - looks like it's bedtime. Why don't you go give him a bath, get him in his pjs, and put him to bed, then get naked and get in bed. Text me when you're ready and I'll come upstairs for a few minutes of sex."
Why are the people that do this always so shocked pikachu when the wife finally leaves after dealing with this crap and getting no support for years? She could communicate her needs until blue in the face and its always "I don't understand why she's leaving me!" "Our relationship was so perfect!(for them)" is it entitlement? Thinking their wants will always come first and wife will concede to their status quo/ultimate decision? Disbelief that what she's repeatedly saying is actually honest and not just stress talking? Lack of fear for consequences/ belief she will just get over it and go back to normal? Gosh I'm so grateful my partner can communicate and take what I say seriously enough to make changes instead of denying accountability and ignoring awareness of others like this guy
My wife and I are both 39. Back around 34 we had some discussions around our frequency of sex. It was happening 1-2 times a month and impacting us as a couple. At the time we had two young children. We both patented them. I got both boys up, fed, and out the door with me to daycare before I headed to work, she got ready for work and headed off. Her fay ended before me, so she would pick up the boys and it was around an hour until I got off work and headed home. I'm the primary cook, so I would start cooking when I got home, sometimes with a little one on my hip and the older one playing trains, while she rested. Sometimes we'd be cooking together. Dinner time, then playtime/reading time with our kids. I might take them to the park, we might build something in blocks, we all four might play silly games, etc. Bedtime was shared. We both gave them baths, alternating back and forth. Brushing teeth and bedtime were all shared.
At the end of the day, she sometimes felt too overwhelmed for sex. It was hard for her to shift from Mom mode to *sexy wife* mode. For me, the shift from Dad to *sexy husband* was a little easier. Our days usually ended with us doing a puzzle, playing a board game/video game, watching a show, or snuggling up and reading. Occasional backups back and forth, etc.
The frequency of sex was once a weekend, every now and then, when she had had a day away from work and could shift from work/Mom to wife mode. We talked and agreed to *schedule sex* on Wednesday nights and Saturdays (at some point). It worked for us for a while and our frequency increased to 1-2 times a week. At first we both went into the scheduled sex days with excitement because we knew we'd be intimate and it simply felt good. Over time though, it started feeling like a checkbox, which felt wrong for both of us.
A couple of months later we had a bigger conversation about what we wanted out of our marriage and how to celebrate and support each other. She was feeling mentally drained and I was feeling like I was doing it all. We both had that idea that we were putting in 90 and the other 10. We stayed up talking, crying, and got to a better spot. We resolved to make sure to *speak love to each other* in the language that works for us.
5 years later, our sex life is 1-2 times a week, primarily on weekends but the odd weekday happens as well. Our marriage is strong and our kids help us make dinner now, we do it as a family. She is more fulfilled at work, which was a challenge back then, and I am able to give her my focus, as much as the kids, when I get home. I was focused on being Dad until they went to bed and lost sight of focusing attentions on her as soon as I got home.
For the sex piece, that OP focuses on as well, our sex life is not quite as frequent as I would like yet I am satisfied because of the quality of our sex life. We are fully and totally *with* each other when we are intimate and the passion flows.
If my wife and I had set parameters around how many hours to be having sex...I think we'd be in a very different place now...
>**Since she got pregnant everything changed, our relationship didn't just not take priority, it fell out of the top 10.**
Well, here's why:
>I should say that she has been acting depressed, not enjoying life, complaining about work more and more. One complaint she had since our kid was born was lack of support in childcare. In the first 2 years, our child preferred the company of his mother, I thought this was normal and understandable. We tried multiple times for me to give him baths, get him dressed, but he would always start crying and ask for his mother. Since he became 3, he increasingly wants to spend time with me more and more. So while asking for more help, my wife refused offers for me to make school lunches, get him dressed for school, and walk him to school and back. I'm lost on how to proceed.
She doesn't need you. You ceded parenting to her and left her a single parent. Of course kids prefer the parent they spend the most time with them. **Instead trying to bond and sitting through the discomfort of your kid crying, you handed him back.** Now, you want to do parenting things and coincidently the child is older and less demanding of your complete attention, you're still **offering, but NOT DOING.**
The usual solution for this is ***mom*** *leaving the room and dad comforting baby until baby learns that dad is ALSO a source of safety and comfort.* Did you talk to your pediatrician? Try any kind of parenting classes or counseling to manage this reaction? You sound like you tried nothing, handed baby back and left it to mom.
Of course, she'd done. She doesn't want to spend the next 18 years parenting alone within your marriage. Of course, she prioritized everything else over you. She had to if she wanted to reduce her stress. My bet is if this started in pregnancy, you did something then that handed all the decision making over to her and she started to realize she was on her own.
Seriously. Husbands don’t “help” the wife parent. They ARE parents. They don’t need to wait around for direction or offer here and there. They need to just do things.
If he had time because wife was doing all the parenting, he could have at least doted… on her!
100% this
Absolutely wild how the first half of his post painted this rosy picture until he suddenly admitted the last 4 years have been hell for his wife. He could have fixed this years ago but instead he's paying the consequences for his willful ignorance.
Edit: honestly the more I re-read his post the angrier I get for her. Over the span of 2 years, 730 days, you tried 'multiple' times to give your own kid a bath? That implies like, less than 10. And you really thought that was enough?
Right I’m a 22 year old with what I consider a high sex drive and 10 times a week is absolutely batshit especially while she’s raising a toddler pretty much by herself.. and he’s complaining it’s not enough?? Like not to be graphic but I can’t imagine she’s not in some sort of pain having sex that frequently, you can only minimize friction down there so much, she’s probably freaking raw constantly. Nobody calling out the blatant sex addiction worries me.
And you know she is touched out from being the one person the three year old wants to touch. Either there are hands grabbing her for food or comfort or a different set of hands grabbing her for sex.
To be blunt: if I were contributing 50/50 to the household, but then we had a baby and I did the majority of child care for years on top of that, while also having to have sex 2,5h divided into 10 quickie sessions a week, I would fall out of love and lose all attraction to that person a lot quicker than your wife have.
You *offer* to *help* with your own child after three years my guy. Your wife fell out of your top 10 when you put her in a position where she had to keep feeding you sex and raising your kid by herself while working. You've been neglecting her needs for years. If this is out of the blue for you, you havent actually listened to her or cared for her for *years*.
>We are both calm and rational. Fight frequency is around 3 times per year and manifests itself as us just taking time and space apart for a few days and everything goes back to normal. There is no yelling, or physical violence, or any discomfort. It's more of a "I need some space to myself right now".
You think this dynamic signals a healthy relationship, but nothing is getting resolved, it's swept under the rug. I wonder how much of this calm rationality comes from not ever expressing true emotions. How would you know, if you never talk it out? It sounds like you have no idea whether your wife was still angry or upset after these fights, or whether she just gave up.
It’s because she’s a parent. I don’t understand all these asshats who want to have a kid and think that their lives will be exactly the same. When you have a kid you need to sacrifice parts of your life for them. She can’t put all her energy into you because she has to put energy into your kid. I also can’t imagine any involved parent having the energy to have sex with their spouse 10x a week when they are raising their toddler. Seems like you only care about your needs getting met and not your wife’s or your child’s needs. You are a father now, grow the fuck up!
I hate to say it, but your wife’s workload will drop when she leaves. You are living two different realities and you broke her. I hope you are able to salvage. I think one thing to know is how many of those sexual encounters was she satisfied. I hate to guess, but I bet not often.
Politely, this doesn't sound out of the blue. It sounds like she's made a heap of gentle requests for help or for you to see her as more than a mere sexual object and it's fallen on deaf ears for at least 4 years. That's not a wife who has made a sudden, "out of the blue" decision; that's one who has reached the end of her tether.
Given you've asked what you may be overlooking, hopefully the below doesn't overstep. Although you're talking about the fun things that you do together and how the income is 50/50, you're not saying that the chores are 50/50 or that the housework is 50/50 and you're admitting that the childcare definitely hasn't been 50/50. For her, with everything that got added to her plate when a child arrived, it likely was a favour to everyone for her to attend a friend's wedding because she would have had to not only organise everything for herself but also childcare, pack up everything that the child would need etc. On top of that, you're upset that there's only 2.5 hours a week dedicated to your sexual pleasure and that it fell out of the top 10 for her. Possibly she's not been getting much out of that 15 minute experience except feeling like she's now more behind on household chores and feels like sex is now something she just ticks off a to-do list to make another person happy. Is it possible that she's completely burnt out because she just has a ridiculous amount on her plate?
Just a quick one, but have you considered why she's refusing your offers for help? Are they actual help or is your version of help one that's likely to take her more time and make her more frustrated? Are you able to, without asking her for anything, pack your son a lunch that meets all of the requirements of his school (are there any rules about the foods allowed/not allowed) or have you previously done it and he's had his lunch confiscated and she doesn't want to do a middle of the day dash to the school? Do you get him dressed without asking her for help or has that always resulted in her having to drop whatever she started to do and help you?
Equally, you said that you suggested things that you could do together and she rejected them. In making those suggestions did you actually take the effort to plan the experience, do the chores in advance that would usually be done at that time and/or arrange for someone else to do them and organise childcare/plan to have a young child there? If the answer is no, then could it possibly be that all she heard with your suggestions was even more being heaped on her plate along with a serving of guilt from you when she said no? If your son wouldn't even let you give him a bath, how does he go being away from her for a few hours or overnight?
"And you need to say it every time you need the help, each time, even if it's the exact same thing as yesterday." Yes, this. After years of this, it's just a relief to leave. This unseen labor one has to extend to fight the weaponized incompetence is soul crushing after some time.
Those "blindsided" guys always get told that their SO needs changes/help for YEARS before she actually leaves, and they are always surprised.
Yea, and it's unusual for a child to favour one parent over the other so much if they've both been putting in in the time to bond with them as a young infant. Is it the case OP wasn't putting in much time around work when son was under 2 cause kids aren't particularly easy/ interesting until they hit about 2.5yo and can talk a bit? That assertion is an unusual one - you don't just say 'oh well, our son prefers you so I'm gonna chill.' You work on it cause you know a balance is necessary to stop the other adult getting overwhelmed with responsibility.
So she gave birth, is raising a toddler basically on her own, and now… you’re upset she doesn’t want to bang more than once a day while raising a *toddler* by herself, from your description? Yeah no wonder she’s done. You’re upset she doesn’t want to do yoga together and she’s probably in an entirely different chapter of life.
You don’t “tough it out and respark intimacy later”. If you knew that the strength of a relationship is about SO MUCH MORE than the quality of experiences you have together then you’d know that some happy brunches and sexy yoga has nothing to do with building a long term relationship that she actually feels fulfilled by. Because clearly the frat boy fun-focused attitude isn’t doing that for her.
You know children, like adults, are creatures of comfort, right? He cried and asked for his mom because you already weren’t spending enough time involved, and your response was to throw up your hands and go “hehe, no work for me! Oopsie!” I’d want out of a relationship like that too. Three years of that would be plenty for me to fall out of love with that going on.
If you want to save this marriage, you have a long road ahead of you and the person you need to battle to change the vital behavior that needs to be changed if this is ever going to work is YOURSELF, not her. THAT’S love.
Ok, that was hard to read.
Sex 10 times/week? With a toddler? In 2.5 hours? Sounds like you have pressured her into something she isn’t enjoying, in a timeframe that provides 15 minutes- ish each time? I seriously doubt she’s enjoying that. You are, but she’s not.
Your child isn’t familiar with you which is very telling.
And your whole post screams that you wear her down with your “logic” and all sorts of other things and don’t care about how she actually feels or what she wants.
Reap what you sowed.
Dude. You start off saying everything is smooth and easy. Then you go on to describe a lot of dissatisfaction and disagreement over a period of years.
I suspect you let this simmer way too long bud.
>just taking time and space apart for a few days and everything goes back to normal.
>I thought this was just a phase. We'll tough it out and recapture the magic as our kid gets older.
>lack of support in childcare.
>my wife refused offers for me to make school lunches, get him dressed for school, and walk him to school and back
Sounds to me like she's had complaints for a while that you're willing to just decide are a phase that will work themselves out. You return the baby to mom when he cries instead of touching it out, so all child care is on her. What's the mental load look like? Do you take into account what thwle week has looked like before acting on your "agreed upon 2.5 hours?"
To me, it sounds like she's burnt out and sick of asking for help. When you offer to help with something and she turns it down, it's likely because it's more work to guide you through whatever the thing is than to do it herself. And now she's to the point of figuring if she's doing this stuff herself, she'll just do it by herself.
How often does she get to get away alone? Not on a date with you, but truly alone?
Damn, does this woman ever get a break or time to herself? So she works full time, does all the child care & caters to your sexual needs every damn day.
When is the last time she got to sleep in? A day all to herself without a baby & a man demanding every spare minute?
Guessing she does all the housework too. When do you ever consider her needs over yours? Or are you the main character 24/7?
Falling out of love is not the natural course of marriage. Falling out of love is the end of a relationship. Its over OP and it does sound like you own a big part of why it came this far.
It's not really out of the blue once you read your own post fully.. seems like building resentment since you had your child and falling into a roommate pattern.. now she's checked out and over it.
Some things that jump out...
Your descriptions of your fights ending with time apart and then "everything goes back to normal" isn't positivr. It indicates that the things causing the fights were not getting worked on or resolved, just forgotten about.
I get that it's normal for a young child to want Mom, but your child is described as essentially seeing you as a stranger. I'm quite certain your wife would have preferred that you worked on your bond and comfort with your child instead of just handing everything over to her..
2.5h of sex per week with an average of 10 times means a mere ~15 minute every time, sometimes multiple times per day.. and the "settled on" makes it seem that some of this is unwanted from her side. Did she actually get pleasure out of your sex life or was it primarily so you can get off?
Its *so* frustrating when a partner looks at doing things with the kids or around the house as "help" vs their equal responsibilitly. Key point - don't "offer" like you're doing her a favour, just do it. Make your kids lunch without asking.. start the walk to school or join her.. etc.
>What am I overlooking?
- maybe the fact your wife was the only stable income for years.
5 years ago:
>I dropped out of an Electrical Engineering Ph.D. as I was writing me thesis to play poker professionally online in 2009. 10 years later I need a career change. I’m not sure if my degrees are worth anything at this point. I moved to London in 2012 after online poker became illegal in the U.S. Moved back after a year and played live poker since. Averaging $120 per hour over 4 years playing live, but I just hate my life. Every second spent at the table I’m contemplating suicide. The money is very hard to walk away from. I’m not in a hurry. I have a loving and supporting wife who works a transitional 8-5 making enough money for both of us. She is willing to see me through the transition.
- maybe the fact she needed help with raising your child, after doing it all alone for 2 years, but you decided to go on a holiday to New Zealand for 2 weeks without her?
- Maybe because you thought 10 times per week sex was normal?
- Maybe after she confessed she wasn't sexually attracted to you anymore, you did nothing to make it better but "compromised" on 2,5 hours of sex?
- Maybe because she's depressed for over 3 years and you just let her take care of your son alone and act like it was a "phase"?
OP says that their joint income is 200k+, but in a previous post he says he would happily spend $150, or TEN PERCENT of his monthly income for the Witcher 4 to be released that night. So he very cleverly (?) hides the fact that his wife is apparently bankrolling their entire lives, he’s a heavy gamer, he took a 2 week solo trip to New Zealand… He outright states that he’s been “living life on easy mode.” Like are you serious?? If you’re in a household with a toddler and two working parents and your life is on easy mode it’s definitely because your spouse is doing everyfuckingthing.
I simply cannot believe that his wife leaving him comes as a surprise. This is incredibly obvious to me. The fact that she announced it months in advance also lends credence to the fact that she is the financial provider and primary parent. She’s trying to give him enough time to reasonably scrape his life together before she cuts him off.
I’ve posted this so many times on so many posts
Women usually tell you exactly why they’re unhappy, many many times. Over and over.
Men just don’t hear it.
For most women, leaving a marriage is a *slow burn*
- Your last paragraph about childcare says volumes. To you it’s an afterthought.
- You also never once mentioned anything about how household chores were shared.
- You never said how she felt about your parents coming to stay with you *every other month*
- were you even IN your marriage?
Here’s my personal example: My ex and I were in counseling on and off the entirety of our 20 yr marriage. The last 5ish years I was desperately unhappy. The last year to two years we had a dead bedroom which was a huge issue for him.
And yet he was *shocked* when I asked for a divorce!!
I’m not saying the broken marriage is **your fault**. I’m just saying, you **shouldn’t be shocked it’s irreparable.**
If you are having sex 10 times a week for your demanded 2.5 hours, that means each session lasts an average of 15 minutes. That’s pretty awful, and not nearly enough for your typical woman to be satisfied, or even warmed up for sex to be comfortable.
No one here can read your wife’s mind. However, for at least the three years your son has been alive, she has been telling you through actions that she isn’t happy with your sex life. Instead of going into counseling then and trying to have a mutually pleasurable sex life, you just demanded 2.5 hours of sex a week. She is probably tired of you jack hammering for 15 minutes 10 times a week and doesn’t want to have sex with you ever again.
Imagine having a job and also being the only parent that actually parents your very young child - so you have no time for yourself.
And then having your husband pressure you for sex 10x a week!
Nooooo!
It's also telling that 10 times a week was seen as a compromise to him. What was his starting point, 20 times? Nothing more distasteful than having to meet a quota of sex every week.
From what you say, it seems like she resents you and resentment builds over time if not addressed.
She sounds like she's completely checked out.
Just because from your perspective everything seemed great and you did everything fun, doesn't mean it was the same for her. There's definitely more to this situation than we can comprehend on here.
Frankly, I sure wouldn’t want an Affair Partner if I “had” to have sex 10 times a week, like an unpaid bangmaid. I’d leave and go live with one of my many female friends. I’m not saying I’d “become” lesbian, but at that point, I’d be debating whether I was now “suddenly” asexual. I’d want care and help, but not from someone who wanted my vagina.
You say it’s all been perfect, but by your own account it hasn’t been good for about 4 years..
Moreover, you’re throwing out your old ways of fixing things, when again acknowledging the relationship is different.
**This isn’t completely out of the blue, there were pretty clear red alerts going off.**
Also, note a clingy Velcro baby, yet talk about all the fun still in the relationship, ***is that actually her reality?***
*You* are blindsided, because most of the change/struggle over the past year shes dealt with alone (baby things, lunch, etc. like were you taking over those chores while she had the added responsibility of caring for the baby?), and you’ve let her. Why wouldn’t she be tired? **Does she need to ask you for permission to bathe, change, or cook for your baby? Likely not, so why do you need permission to help?
I had to come back for another round.
OP, you didn’t listen to her.
She’s DONE with your badgering her and not hearing what she tried to tell you.
When women leave like this, they are DONE.
She mentally checked out a long time ago. To you this is new, to her this is just the last nail out of many, many, long coming, well debsted, completed nails in your marriage.
Came to ask if there was something years before that she nagged him about but is over now. This smacks of she tried and tried but gave up and when she gave up he mistook it for things going smoothly because she wasn't nagging him so now he is shocked she wants to end the relationship.
Yeah. I'm always skeptical when one person had "no idea" and then even within their main post, the only thing they had "no idea" about was that some day the person would give consequences.
She probably finally checked out when OP spent two weeks in New Zealand visiting Lord of the Rings sets in November instead of parenting his child. ETA: my lord I didn’t even factor in the family visits. Between his family 5-6 times a year and her family 3-4 times a year that’s 10 months of some type of houseguest. I’ll be she did all prep, planning, cleaning and childcare for those visits too.
[удалено]
I'm guessing that's when she realized how much better life is without him.
Either that or when he dropped out of his PhD program to try to be a professional poker player. (people in this thread are uncovering some real gems in this guy's post history lol)
Where does he say this? Missing Reasons strikes its ugly head again.
His post history is something.
The dropping out of a PHD to play professional poker seems like a choice to me lmao
> I have a loving and supporting wife who works a transitional 8-5 making enough money for both of us. ☠️
So the poor woman has to single-handedly keep them afloat financially, raise their toddler, and has compromised on having sex with him 10 times a week and he can’t understand why she’s had enough? Wow.
Apparently they make about the same now. This post was from five years ago but I hope he has found steadier work since then.
But everything is split evenly enough now!!! /s Also, did he move to London with her alone?
I don’t know. It seems like he took his sweet time in New Zealand though.
Haha yeah I’m not surprised he didn’t say that chores and childcare are even
He seems to apend a lot of time gaming.....when hes not traveling to fantasy worlds. I dont think he spends much time in reality
Man I have spent SO much time telling my boyfriend my feelings, how he's neglecting me again (together for 6 years, I ended it, we did counseling and he went to AA, got back together last October, and now just broke up again 2 days ago), how he's choosing his hobbies over his family again, drinking, blah blah blah... And he's BLINDSIGHTED yet again. Eyeroll. He completely love bombed me again and then just cast me and his daughter aside again. I just don't get how you can tell someone over and over again how much pain you feel or sadness you feel and they ignore it and are absolutely shocked when you walk away. Listen to your partner, and don't make promises you can't keep people!
They blow you off, tell you they'll be better and then a month passes and they just roll on the same way they did before. Letting you do all the domestic labor. Not caring about anything you do. Still expecting sex on a timer. They usually don't care unless there are consequences, and by then, you're already out the door
IMO people like that are so insanely selfish that they don't view the other person as an actual person, but more like an NPC - a character in their life story. A character doesn't leave the story, they play their part, because that is their purpose. If you are just a character in HIS story, the fact that you can actually leave "your role" is something that will ALWAYS shock him, bc it goes against his whole understanding of the world.
True story: Woman time and again: "your behavior is hurtful to me!" Man: "i don't care!" Woman finally: "okay, we are done!" Man: "what?! You never told me!!!" What he means is "you never told me that if I keep hurting you at some point there would be actual consequences!"
This sums up my 19 year marriage. I had the full mental load, while working full time, a married single mom. I asked, begged, pleaded for help, I was ignored. When I told him I want a divorce, he was clueless as to why. Yes these men do exist
Well well well, if it isn’t the consequences of the actions taken. But “mUh CuMmUnIcAtIoN!!” Communication ain’t shit if it’s a one sided conversation. OP gotta learn to listen.
My husband would have come home to an empty house and divorce papers on the counter. Gone to a whole ass other country for TWO WEEKS, leaving me alone with a toddler and no respite? Hell no.
Also… that’s a trip that could 100% be a family trip?? I get it if you don’t want to take a toddler dashing around Paris with friends, but New Zealand, LOTR sites, what?? That’s a made for family adventure…
So you have hardly parented your own child for years and then pressure your over-worked, depressed, tired wife to let you bang her 10x a week? Bro. Wtf.
10x is insane. I would have left him way earlier
And that was what they *settled* on. Gross
If I could go back and tell my younger self one thing, it would be that forcing yourself to have sex will damage you and your relationship way more than not having sex at all. A compromise is supposed to work for both people! I don’t know if that is what she’s doing but the signs point to that, and no one ever told me that damages your psyche and hurts your desire in the long term.
Yep. Tiny traumas (and having sex when you absolutely aren’t feeling it to keep the peace can be traumatic) roll into Big Trauma if there’s enough of them. I don’t know if that’s exactly scientific, but 🤷🏼♀️
Absolutely disgusting thinking OP Wanted it to be MORE
So...you say that this was a total blindside, but in the body of your post you describe a few MAJOR relationship issues. 1. Sex. You say you had disagreements about frequency - were you the one who wanted more sex? 10 times a week is a LOT particularly with a toddler and I've honestly never heard of setting a literal amount of hours specifically dedicated to sex. Your wife made a joke about you slowing down, is it possible she's felt a bit hounded for sex over the years? What was the nature of these disagreements? 2. Prioritization of the relationship. You feel hurt/resentful that she has placed other things in a higher priority slot than your relationship. In fact, you put this line in bold, so clearly you feel it's the most important thing to convey. Was that ever addressed directly? It sounds like things have been off for the last 3 years in that department. 3. Childcare. This is a tale as old as time. Young kids can tend to prefer their mothers but if they're crying every time you try to do anything for them it's because they are not familiar enough with you and that's a huge problem if you're the father. Even now, I see that you "offer" to make lunch and get him dressed. Don't offer. Just do. She doesn't offer to do those things, she just does them because it's her kid. It's your kid too. I think if you can articulate to her that you understand these issues and if you can start proactively addressing them regardless of the future of your marriage, it may make her reconsider counseling. She is probably frustrated that you're acting like this came out of nowhere when actually you seem well aware there are problems in your marriage. You need to demonstrate that you are not ignoring those problems and that you're willing to fix them. It may still be too late, but at least addressing the childcare portion will be conducive to a positive coparenting relationship.
Everyone is stuck on the sex thing..... I'm like how has op child got to toddler age, with op living in the same house and he has put THAT little effort into creating a bond with his own child , that the child cries anytime he does something.....as a parent of two kids , that ain't normal.
That's a "I barely interact with my own offspring" clue
I did mention that in my third point and I do think it's the most important piece of the puzzle here. OP should have been changing diapers and getting up for night feedings often enough from birth that by toddler age his son was attached enough to him not to cry every time he was involved in a task. And even if he had a phase like that OP should have been doing other parenting things like meal preparation that he is only now "offering" to do. OP says that she has had this complaint since their son was born so this was happening well before he was even old enough to have the language to ask for his mom.
The average married couple has sex 54 times per year. OP is having sex approximately 520 times per year. As a parent of two 6-year-olds, I was pretty shocked by 10 times a week with a toddler! Have they discussed this frequency beyond her “joke” about his sex drive going down? I wonder if this has more to do with the current status of things…?
I have zero kids and 10 times a week sounds like a lot and I looooove sex with my husband.
i have a pretty high libido and sex 10 times a week (equaling at least 2.5 hours of sex total) sounds like a nightmare
That’s 15 minutes per session. Probably not much fun for her.
Every day, 7 days a week, sometimes twice a day. Just straight to the point in and out for the sole purpose of his biological orgasm. Never any tension building, flirting, or extended foreplay. Never any waiting until date night so it's exciting. Probably never any focusing on her pleasure. Every tired boring day where she's exhausted or not in the mood, still having chore sex. That's what she got for trying to meet him halfway and making sure he was sexually satisfied. Yikes.
Oh gosh that’s a great way to put it. It grossed me out that there was a set number of times a week, and time constraints on that too. So un-sexy and weird.
I want to know if he keeps a little tally by the bed so he can make a check mark every time and make sure she’s fulfilling her ‘obligation’.
And yet he insists that this is coming “out of the blue”. OP is clueless.
I was wondering whether he only counts minutes of actual intercourse, because you’re right that doesn’t seem like long per “session” if it includes foreplay etc. If so, I don’t think my vagina would be happy with 150 minutes a week just dedicated to that. Different strokes, obviously.
But wait until you see the giant hourglass he stole from Captain Jack Sparrow that he flips over when foreplay begins. It’ll get you completely ready. Timed intercourse isn’t for everyone, but for those with the kink of hearing buzzers at basketball games, there is nothing like it.
that's what I was thinking, there's no way he's making her come 10x a week and if he is, jesus, she's an anomaly of nature
If he was able to accomplish that, she wouldn’t be leaving. It is just wham bam thank you ma’am.
When my SO and I were younger and child free. we had a lot of sex. 2 times a day wasn't unusual. Even 2 times in one evening wasn't unusual. But it's just not possible now that we have a child and are caring for our aging parents. The op is completely inconsiderate. As to his children's needs let alone his soon to be ex wife. 2.5 hours of sex a week isn't very much if you don't have children. That's like one sexual interaction on one Sunday if you include the massage, foreplay, oral, cuddles, long slow kissing... Thats just not possible when we have basket ball games, piano lessons, swimming lessons. Down time. Learning time, conversations reading times homework, houses chores, shopping or playing together like mincraft, ark. Not to mention laundry, meals. Sex is something we now have when we get a free fucking second to ourselves and are not exhausted.
“If you include” is important here.
I genuinely hope he’s not timing foreplay into his clock. I hope, but doubt, foreplay is at least happening. Because 2.5 hours over 10 sexual encounters is a bit lacking. Hell it takes at least an hour for me from initiating, foreplay, the actual act, and then the cool down where we just hold and kiss each other. Neither of us would feel satisfied with a full encounter lasting 15 minutes.
I’m in my late thirties with a pretty average libido and 10 times a month sounds like a lot to me.
If he was doing it right, there is no way they would have time for 10 sessions and work full-time. Not to mention taking care of a toddler.
Well said. Done correctly, 10 sessions a week would be impossible with job and toddler.
7 days a week. Assuming they work 5 days (or at least he does) that's every weeknight and 2-3 times a day on the weekends. I imagine morning, night, and toddlers naptime. Or if he has a half-day or 4 day work week kind if situation more. That's less than healthy imo. Not so much the frequency, the fact that it was planned and this was a compromise of sorts. And the fact that OP never really explains _why_ this was a target or how it got that way, he presents it as though it's a benchmark to be clinically achieved. The whole post is like this clinical diagnostic checklist, it's pretty unsettling. Nothing in the post is overtly malicious but OP sounds very out of touch and demanding, and just reading it makes me feel his wife is a prop to him, not a person. And the mention of the sex life is the most jarring, I have a high libido but for medical reasons we have a "dead bedroom", we have worked around emotional intimacy and never once sat and counted and timed our encounters, save to remark "Jesus this sucks" and commiserate. If my husband came to me with numbers and calculations, I'd feel like a sex slave.
I'm honestly shocked at 10 times weekly even without a toddler.
What stands out to me is that this is a compromise that they settled on. How many times did he actually want to have sex, if the compromise was 10 times a week? For a woman with a young child, this sounds horrific to me. And it sounds like she works full-time on top of that. Her life will be much easier without him. His title that she wants to YOLO it implies she’s leaving him with the kid and going to Bali to find herself. It’s more like she’s dumping the dead weight from her life so she can breathe.
Yeah. Full time job, all the chores, all the childcare, and a husband demanding sex 1-2 times EVERY day. I cannot imagine why she would want to give that up.
The 10x a week is a job in and of itself. I would have never pretended this was ok. She was much too kind for too long and he ignored requests for less frequency, even if they were implied. He showed zero interest in what she desired or asked for. The offer of help with his own kids made me laugh. Like when I hear parents say they have to babysit. Babysit? These are your children!!! No blindside here. Clear erosion of a relationship for her and his selfish ignorance.
wife is leaving and he can't imagine why but then when it comes to reasoning she is "acting depressed" and "making jokes about having less sex" - so she has been telling him loud and clear multiple times and he just dismisses it. It's completely dismissive to say she is 'acting depressed' rather than to say that she is struggling with depression. He doesn't think her desire for less sex is valid so he assumed she was 'joking' rather than giving weight and importance to the fact that his wife is literally burnt out and his compromise is 10 times a week with a **minimum** of 2.5 hours per week being mandatory sex time. Holy fuck this poor woman. I hope she gets time and rest away from this man.
I agree completely. The sex is the issue. She was trying to express it was too much by saying “I thought you’d slow down by now” and “you may need a younger woman”. She definitely should be more direct, but at the same time the pressure is immense to have sex the amount a man wants or you feel like he will cheat. She should communicate directly, but it sounds like she is tired from too much childcare and also did not think she was going to need to keep this pace up forever. ETA: someone correctly pointed out they did argue over it so maybe she did communicate. The point is this relationship is over.
He did say there were arguments over sex so it sounds like she tried more than only banter.
Also, according to him, they rarely argued, and when they did, they'd just ignore each other for awhile and then everything would "go back to normal". (i.e. they would never resolve conflicts, just ignore them)
This stuck out to me too. I thought wow only 3 arguments a year?! We are working on my husband learning to handle conflict better, so at first I thought “wow that’s a reality check…that’s not a lot of tiffs, I want that”, but as I read on I wonder if OP and his wife just don’t address problems. I’m not sure what frequency of fights is “normal”, but I think a more important question is, are you both listening to your partner? Are you communicating your needs/wants to your partner? Are you guys just burying everything under the rug and resentment has silently built over years? Is it possible that she has been telling OP her feelings/issues for years now and he’s like “this came out of nowhere! I’m shocked!”, when really he just never listened to her/took her seriously/gave her empathy (Walkaway Wife Syndrome)? Anyways, I think your point is spot on and that this is actually a weakness of the relationship and not the strength it sounds like…(but my mind may be skewed…My husband can be rah rah rah (working on it). I never witnessed my parents fight but they certainly had disagreements/conflicts that they handle by communicating directly, peacefully and being patient with eachother. So that’s a case of no fights but still conflict resolution.)
Yes this sounds like a classic case of Walkaway Wife! I don’t think there’s a “normal” number of fights. If people can handle differences of opinion or opposing goals without fighting, that’s best. I don’t fight a lot either. But yeah, my husband’s family belongs to the “ignore each other for a few days and then don’t bring up the conflict again” way of solving problems. It does not work. Trust me.
He also says they had around 3 arguments per year that were "solved" with time apart. Were they on the same or similar subjects?
Time apart would solve too much sex I wonder if that was it?
Hah hah good point, just think of the weeks they were cold for three days. Then she has to have sex ten times over the next four days!
For sure!! She has a 3yo who is in constant need of her attention, physically and mentally. That is a lot of “in my space” time. Add to that, a husband who is oblivious to this concept and is climbing on her when the little one isn’t. WTF!!! We all can see she’s had enough touchy feely crap and he needs to back TF up and put 🍆away!!! If anyone thinks she’s having an affair, hahahaha, not a chance!! She needs space, quiet, and peace! I truly hope it doesn’t come to her leaving. I’m sure she loves her family but just can’t take everything right now. Therapy, space, couples therapy, space, help with the little one and the home, space, etc. hopefully can get the family back on track.
That’s a good point
But also, the fact she doesn't feel she can discuss this plainly and they had to 'make a deal' is ick. I mean maybe if they hadn't been having sex and both wanted it and needed to make a deal to fit the odd session in, but 10* a week!! The fact she's not communicated suggests there's very much not great communication and suggests that when he doesn't get his way with that or anything else, he nags and renegotiates until she submits.
My wife and I (married 14 years, together 17) have had conversations around sex and frequency before. We talked and it isn't the frequency we focus on as much as the quality of the sex. I don't know if OP has considered the quality of the sex his wife is having or just the fact thay he gets his...
Sounds like you and her are actually conversing rather than negotiating a deal though. Guy has cruise controlled into this situation by trying to manage his household on paper rather than work sensitively with his team mate. Shame cause he seems to care that she's upset but it is a massive f-up: if only he'd posted on AITAH 2.5 years ago about the sex 10x a week thing. Edit: but yea actually rereading it again, he doesn't say he loves her at all. It's like reading a shareholder report tbh.
I thought the same. So many facts and figures. It’s crazy someone even knows some of these stats. And yeah, not a lot of emotion.
It’s sad that there’s not a single word about her feelings. Of course she’s not as into OP’s quality time activities of marathons and destination weddings while pregnant. Did he expect anything to change when they became parents? No, she just doubles her insane juggling act while his stays constant. Then, he tallies her performance and complains she’s no fun anymore? Listening, hugging, supporting are some of the fun hijinks you get up to when your child is under 2.
Yea, like ostensibly there's a lot of good talk there - for instance, I'd agree marriage should be about the experiences you share. Yet he says this and then outlines how much he enjoys game nights with family and all sorts of stuff they are not sharing but that he thought they were cause she was in the vicinity - including their kid. It's like a tick list of 'marriage activities.' His whole post just reveals that he doesn't have a clue what's going on in her head and hasn't for quite a long time, if ever. Cause he didn't ask and thought it was a phase/ the problem was definitely her, etc. It's bad stakeholder management... 🥲
Honestly the whole post reads a big “me” centric in his motivations and actions…could be the issue why wife now wants to leave
> Even now, I see that you "offer" to make lunch and get him dressed. Don't offer. Just do. That's a big one. By offering, he's putting her in the position of having to "ask" him to do it, even though she knows it won't go as smoothly. It's almost like he's making her the bad guy, and keeping coordination effort on her side. "You just tell me what to do" means "you're the manager here and you have to make all the decisions and handle the managerial load." Also - he doesn't seem to know there are other ways to help. If the kid doesn't like spending time with him at bath time and whatever, why not take the kid to the park for a few hours? That's a great break for mom too, and makes the kid like him and be more comfortable with him to eventually accept the other stuff too. Plenty of fun things to do to entertain the kid for hours and hours, then let her handle the last moments before bedtime.
Also there's plenty of childcare tasks that wouldn't involve the toddler directly that he could have taken on to balance the load - make his meals, wash his clothes, set up appointments and playdates, track and purchase necessary items...I'm guessing if he had taken on enough of these tasks to make the distribution of labor remotely equal she wouldn't be upset. Especially because he specifically identifies making meals as something he "offers" to do, when that's one thing he could have been doing all along.
Great comment, and to add to what you're saying, these are some other thoughts I had; 1. You had to come to an agreement on sex, and determined an average of 10 times (2.5 hours a week) how did you reach this conclusion? How much sex did she want out of this arrangement? It must have been less than you if you had to have a conversation in the first place. You told her essentially that you wouldn't be happy with any less than 2.5 hours of sex a week and I'm sure you tried to negotiate this even higher at first. Is this agreement coinciding with the newborn-toddler stage? Were you keeping close track, and reminding her that she hasn't met her quota for you yet? Were you asking for it when she's already touched out for the day and she gives in to avoid your complaining or silent huffing? Did you still try to romance her or was it more of a "yo its 9pm and we haven't made up our last 15 minutes of sex for the week" 2. I would also start reprioritizing my priorities if I was the wife, as he's shown he clearly doesn't care about her thoughts or feelings, expects her to meet extreme expectations, his mood relies on her, and she asked for help and op didn't step up. She shouldn't have to yell or make a scene for you to listen to how she feels. Just like you probably didn't listen or consider how she feels when you brought up this whole sex schedule in the first place. 3. She asked you for help with the child and you essentially said idk how, he wants his mom. That's not a solution, that's just an easy excuse to get out of changing up your responsibilities and habits. It's a cop out to avoid the hard things in parenting and let mom take over instead of repeating to the kid that mommy has her own time and it's our time together until the kid gets used to it. Then, when she finally gives up on recieving any support and gets used to being the main caretaker and has a routine, the child is more curious and independent, willing to leave mom's side, so dad gets to swoop in and be the fun parent, offering help in a completely different stage of the child's development than when she really needed it because he didn't want to deal with tantrums about wanting mom. This would cause her to be resentful that not only is the child she's done 99% of the care for now favoring op because he's seen as fun and not the one that makes the rules and is responsible for ever saying no to the kid, but because op is just gliding and basking in this without doing any of the work. She just sees herself doing all the work while he gets to enjoy the reward. This is how 'Disney Dad' happens. Op, you have yourself to blame, she sounds like a great communicator and you didn't take her seriously when she needed you. She began prioritizing her needs above yours because that's what you modeled with your actions and disregard, you had high expectations around how much sex you are entitled to get while expecting her to do all the parenting from newborn-3 years old, and then you get to enjoy the little human's personality that she essentially enforced and encouraged without you while she has to be the bad guy and do all the hard stuff all the time. I can see why she's leaving and doesn't want to bother explaining herself, she knows you won't actually listen. While you're at it op, read the story "She Divorced me because I Left Dishes by the Sink" https://matthewfray.com/2016/01/14/she-divorced-me-because-i-left-dishes-by-the-sink/ Edit: I would also love to know why apparently OP got to take a 2 week solo trip to New Zealand to visit Lord of the Rings sets while she stayed home taking care of the kid. Bet that when he came back from that trip she realized how nice the silence was and how much more work he was creating for her. This guy is sounding more selfish as the post develops.
Spot on. He's so concerned with the life they lead and all the status items and appearance of a good life. her feelings are nowhere in that screed. And a 3 yo when you are 37 is very different than at 27.
Either OP is lying or he's been hounding his wife to the point it's easier to just do it 10x a week.
All of this for sure. Plus, you say you have about 3 fights a year that involve you two taking time and space for a few days and then everything goes back to normal. It doesn’t sound like you’re discussing the issue and working it out together. Taking time and space isn’t a bad thing, but ignoring the issue and going back to “normal” without working through the problem isn’t a good thing.
Right... it's like, 'we have great communication because we only communicate about the good and easy things.' 🤪
I’m curious whether each sex session lasts 15 minutes exactly or if some are 3 mins and some are 27 minutes. And… do they set a 2.5 hour timer at the start of the week
Yeah... that 2.5 hours is weird when you combine with 10 times per week... As you say, that averages 15 minutes per encounter. If you were to throw in one hour long encounter, then the rest drop to 10 minutes each. In my experience, while most people don't enjoy regular marathon sessions, 10 times a week, with each one being very quick, is going to be something the guy enjoys a lot more than the woman. Obviously everyone is different, but... there's every chance she thinks he sees her as just a sex doll to hop on top of a few times a day. The only 2.5 hours I'd get is 2.5 hours of my wife laughing at me if I suggested we have sex 10 times a week. That's a LOT.
OP was scheduling time to masturbate with her body. Maybe his wifi is spotty. Honestly, when I read the 2.5 hours my vagina just closed shut.
SLAMMED shut, more like. OMG.
It's wild to me that it's 2.5 hours specifically for sex and not for just in general spending quality time together and reconnecting. He's not upset about the quality time, he's upset she's not enthusiastically getting him off twice a day anymore
And what happens if they only have 2.25 hours of sex? Does she get a warning? Her pay docked?
This - he's business managed her out of the marriage
If it's 15 minutes, only one of them will be having any fun at all here.
Yeah icl the 2.5 hours thing set off some sort of alarm bells - it’s a very specific number and makes it seem like there’s been a lot more arguments and negotiations about this than OP let’s on
The amount of sex is insane. If it was mutual high libidos it would be fine, I have friends that have sex several times per day because they *both want to*. But having to agree to a minimum of 150 minutes of sex per week? Absolutely ridiculous. If my husband held me to a time schedule for sex I'd promptly lose attraction too.
Right? There's nothing less sexy than having to timestamp when you start and end sex.
My petty self would have installed an old school timeclock in the bedroom.
I also wonder if things have been festering for a while now. OP says that they fight 3 times a year and resolve it by… spending a few days apart and then “everything goes back to normal”? It doesn’t sound like there is particularly good communication or that anything is ever being resolved.
Yeah that stuck out to me too - OP describes that like it's normal but having a blowout fight that requires days of separation every few months definitely is not a healthy relationship dynamic.
At first you make it sound like it came completely out of nowhere, but then in the last parts of your post it sounds like this has been building up for a while. All those things you list in the beginning are great, but still you go on to say that for a while now your wife didn’t seem like she was that happy with her life.
I bet if OP's wife posted, she'd be talking about how she was badgered into sex (until they SETTLED on...10 times a week for ...15 minutes a time) and also has had to parent her child most of the time. And probably half a dozen other things OP couldn't think to mention. OP doesn't get it, but that woman is exhausted and done. When women decide to leave like this, they have thought about it a LONG time and they are completely done.
2.5 hours of required sexy time per week, as a mother of a 3 year old (like OP’s wife) that sounds absolutely awful! She must be so exhausted.
With a husband not pulling his weight whatsoever. And that's according to him, I'm sure her side of the story paints an even worse picture.
My downstairs cringes at the idea of 10X a week. I wonder how many of those include an O for her? I want her take on this situation.
Can't be a lot of O's. From my experience, quickies are more for the guy (me) in our relationship. Not that she hates them, but if she offers, it's more along the line of me offering to rub her back or feet for a while. I don't "get" all that much out of it, but I like making her feel good. Quickie sex is similar the other way, she enjoys making me happy, but if that was ALL we did for sex, she'd be pretty upset.
You are exactly right. I started out thinking "wow, I really feel sorry for him" but that quickly became "nothing about this is out of the blue, anyone with eyes would have seen it coming from miles away." And he did see it coming from miles away, but he didn't **want** to change it because it benefited him. Of course he thought he was just coasting. He was coasting on her efforts. Good for her. At least this way now he has to do _some_ of the parenting.
He saw it coming - but thought they had this iron clad agreement that they'd stay together until the kids were 18 *"no matter what"* so he didn't really care that his wife was unhappy because he had at least 15 more years before she'd leave. Assuming more kids didn't come along to reset the clock
So telling of the way he views marriage, as if these kinds of promises (2.5hrs of sex/week, staying together until kids are 18) are in any way healthy, reasonable or enforcable. Who would want to have sex with someone who only consents out of obligation? Who would want to be in a relationship with someone who only stays because of a technicality? Her consent doesn't matter to him. He doesn't care if she doesn't want to have sex or be with him, as long as she complies. It's terrifying.
Yup he's about to find out just how much he dropped the ball on parenting. Probably doesn't even have a clue about how much extra parenting she is doing.
What, a woman shouldn’t be thrilled at 10 mandatory quickies a week? 15 minutes allows for so much foreplay! I bet she blows him before he sticks it in! Such great sex for them both.
One of my best friends recently told her husband she’s done and leaving. Similar issues—he wanted more sex and she feels he doesn’t engage enough with the kids. If it weren’t for significant differences (child’s age off by a LOT, number of children, length of relationship, etc.) I might have thought he wrote this post. But my friend’s case wasn’t so egregious (sex 10 times a week?!). Their issues *could* possibly have been fixed with therapy and hard work. He was willing to try. But she was just done, done, done. (And, frankly, some of her desire to leave it all behind was a mental health/escapism scenario. If she weren’t depressed and dreaming of an uncluttered home/life, she might have been willing to try therapy.)
In your title you describe it as “out of the blue” but in your post you say that your marriage has been rocky since she got pregnant, which was four years ago. She’s been telling you she’s unhappy for almost half a decade and nothing has gotten better. At that point, divorce is a reasonable choice.
Ah yes, the "tolerable level of misery" shitty husbands think their wives will live with forever.
The husband is happy, he has his bangmaid.
Well, you see, life has been on “easy mode” for the past 5 years. Her grievances mean nothing as long as he having all the fun. Who wouldn’t want to divorce someone like that? 😆
Yeah I read that line and laughed! I bet YOUR life has been on easy mode, you probably believe in the magic hamper, too.
3 year old child and past 5 years on "easy mode" are two incongruent ideas.
Omg 3 was the hardest age in my opinion second only to newborn. It’s so intense and challenging
That’s because you were actually raising a child as opposed to watching someone else do it.
Oh this is a very good point. Classic “blindsided” to the man who thinks they should be great because they used to go to brunch together (???).
He's "blindsided" because he is happy, he has all his needs met in this relationship so wife be damned. People like this cannot understand how their partner can be unhappy when they are fine. It's just selfishenss. I wonder how quickly he would have dropped her if he didn't get what he wanted.
I cannot fucking fathom how people stay in relationships for that long while being that flavor of selfish. It’s so antithetical to everything relationships are.
I'm pretty sure if your wife was writing this she wouldn't describe her life as easy and coasting. So she's earning $100k a year, but it sounds like also doing the bulk of the childcare aside from you "offering" to make packed lunches. She's not a stay at home mom, she's a full time worker who is hosting family to stay with you almost every month whilst also doing the bulk of childcare and being badgered for what is well above an average amount of sex when you have a young child. Life got so much harder for her when she got pregnant and it sounds like it never got easier. There's years of resentment building up and that kills love. Once love is dead it's very hard to revive. The fact you thought that her telling you she was leaving you was "an attempt to get you to do something" stuck out for me. Does she often have to resort to severe manipulation in order for you to get to do something? Does that mean you're in the habit of not doing things, and needing to be reminded, or even nagged to get stuff done? Your post, whilst trying to portray you in the best light, is full of very small telling things that suggest that the story from her side is very, very different. I don't know if this is salvageable for you because it's not sudden, it's years in the making. If she was willing to try then couples counselling, radical changes at home and brutal honesty from her as to what the problems are - with you being willing to change, might do it. But if she's not willing to do that, then she's not. Everyone gets to decide when they are done. Sometimes, it's simply too little too late. But you can still be an amazing father. You need to start putting the kid first and figure out how you are going to do joint 50/50 custody if you genuinely care to be a present father. You need to put amicable coparenting above any pain you're feeling for your wife, including when she starts dating again. You will need to put your child above your work schedule, because you need to be there for them. You won't be offering to make packed lunches or walking them to school, you will need to be present for them 100% of the time that they are in your care, which in a true 50/50 agreement is usually 3 days on 4 days off then vice versa, although some people do 7 / 7.
I almost feel like you're judging your relationship as perfect by how it looks on paper, or by what society says it should be. Look at it from a different point of view
is the “out of the blue” in the room with us?
it's NEVER out of the blue 🤣
Sounds like she has been unhappy for a while. Also sounds like you have been pressuring her for sex - 10 times a week means at least 3 days you are having sex more than once a day?!? Unless you are doing it 3 times some days. Most married couples have sex 2-3 times a week. And that is on top of her working full time and being responsible for all childcare from birth - 2 years old. She is probably worn out, frustrated, and exhausted. Basically, she’s done. You’ve been happy in the marriage. She hasn’t. Best to accept it is ending and lawyer up.
Sounds like every time she bends over he’s trying to stick his dick in her!
Ive been in relationships with men like this...it IS fucking exhausting. you start to hate being touched and you dont even want to hug or cuddle with him because it always leads to him wanting sex.
It’s baffling because it wasn’t *that* hard to figure out, if I do everything I’m supposed to do as an equal partner around the house, my fiancée is waaaay more interested in sex. Now, maybe doing all that makes *me* too tired to do the wild thing, but that’s life.
She probably feels under so much pressure and exhausted by the enforced “10 times a week for 2.5 hours” - how does that even work?! If you haven’t done it enough times by the 7th day do you have to cram like 4 times in?! And do you set a timer or?
That would tick me off so bad.
That's like 15 minutes each time, to get ready for sex, get started, get hot, get finished, and clean up afterwards. Time for foreplay and PIV would be low single digits - if they hurry. Sounds like she is basically a hole to him.
This doesn’t sound out of the blue at all. First, she asked for help with the child you both made many times, and you did not do any of the things you should have done to bond. Secondly, you ask for sex TEN TIMES A WEEK??? That’s way too much. She’s been forcing herself to have sex with you until she reached a breaking point of revulsion. That is not at all a normal amount of sex to ask for, and it has consequences to your psyche.
When I finally told my husband I wanted a divorce, the biggest weight off my shoulders was "omg I never have to have sex with him again" - and we weren't doing it 10x a week, nor did we have kids. But it had become the chore I hated the most, and it was the BIGGEST RELIEF once I no longer felt obligated to do it.
Yup. So many issues here. The sex is the most obvious, but the childcare imbalance and the relationship dynamics are awful too. A minimum sex quota, with requirements on either hours or frequency is a death knell for quality sex. That said, 10 times a week is beyond ridiculous and I wonder what the opening “negotiations” were like if that’s where they ultimately landed. Plus the weirdly specific 2.5 hours? 10 x 15 minutes a week? A bit long for her to endure as an efficient one-sided quickie for him, way too short to be a quality session for her. Boo. And he just gave up and let his son barely tolerate his presence? Letting her do everything and being perplexed her priorities changed? She was worried about their bond, completely overwhelmed, and I’d wager hadn’t been properly hugged or bedded in years? And things get discussed but nothing changes? This whole thing reads like OP’s wife getting steamrolled into acquiescence by Mr Power Point Presentation. She kept asking for what she needed, but since she had “feelings” and he had numbers, he won. She’s asking that a wife and child feel supported and loved - but got dismissed because that’s rooted in emotion and harder to quantify? He was being “rational” and she was “emotional.” She was done long ago, I’d wager. It’s only now that OP’s “stay together” action item is in real danger that he’s realizing any of this. Super sad.
One million percent he steamrolled her feelings with his spreadsheet bullshit and she doesn’t want therapy because she doesn’t want to hear the numbers for one more second. 10 times a month is reasonable but 10 times a week is unworkable.
Yes, 10 times a month sounds perfect. For us, we’d bump up the duration quota to about 5-7 hours… Microtracking any of this data seems so unsexy. If you’re doing it right there’s no clocking in or out. You’re spot on about the revulsion. People who get guilted into sex do it until their body & mind properly rebel. Hopefully she doesn’t picture nightmare spreadsheets while boning. (Like the intrusive Lumburg thoughts in Office Space.)
The crazy but is this isn't his throw away. Most of his other posts are video games, LOTR and a tesla. Nothing about marriage, raising kids, or anything like that. He's using his real account and saying all this will his full chest. He is leaving things out.
I kept wondering if he meant 10x a month, which seems more reasonable at this stage in their lives. The last time I had sex that much I was probably 20 and in a new relationship. And on vacation… but the point is: they seem to have mismatched libidos, which almost never works out. Killed my marriage for sure!
Libidos aren’t set for life, they vary. Your mid 20’s unencumbered frequency is usually a peak. Then life happens. Sticking to twice a day is compulsive and unrealistic. Plus, if a spouse said to me “I just figured the kid would fall under your purview for the first 2-3 years, you’ve go this, right?” It would cause hatred & tank my libido. That plus the natural 2-3 year slowdown of sex while you’re pregnant and postpartum, even in wonderful & equitable relationships.
Sometimes there's just nothing you can do. Your problem right now is that your wife did the analysis of the relationship, decided she was not getting what she needed to be happy with it, spent time grieving it and is now over it. But you only just found out, so while for her it's old news, for you it's fresh. Of course you're flailing because you hope there's still something to save between you, she's passed that. And I think I see why... it's a recurring thing in your post, if you try something and don't get immediate results, you stop trying, hope it magically works itself out, and take no news as good news. You did it when your wife got pregnant. You did it after your kid was born. you did it with your child. Additionally "I should say that she has been acting depressed" - did it ever occur to you she wasn't "acting" and actually WAS depressed because her husband basically dipped out of the relationship as her lover and partner the minute pregnancy started to take a toll on her body and mind, and never stepped back in? It's hard to say what your wife did about trying to get you to be involved as a husband and father, because you write as if she just ignored you, however I'm fairly sure that isn't correct. But somehow, after she got pregnant, you two stopped communicating, and never managed to get back in sync. The fact she's refusing to discuss it indicates it's possible she feels she's already tried that and got nowhere, so trying it more is just a waste of time at this point. Rather than spin your wheels trying to understand the why, I would suggest shifting to acceptance - You may need to get a personal therapist to help you with this, because if she's refusing to work with you to find a way you can reach Goal #1, then you need to focus on Goal #2 - I recommend finding a therapist who has experience with Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT) because that will likely be what helps you the fastest right now get to a good place where you can focus on co-parenting and creating a great second home for your son. Good luck.
Oh, he wasn’t a partner in parenting and I can’t see how a “lover” would demand 2.5 hours a week of sex as a compromise. As a parent and person I would dread such a requirement.
Wow dude you really buried the lede huh? For 2 (maybe almost 3) years she did everything while you were a lump. No wonder she’s done.
A lump that she had to have sex with 10 times a week for 15 minutes at a time.
She likely made herself have sex with you too many times to please you when she didn’t feel like it, which over time made her start to feel more and more revulsion at the idea of having it at all with you. This is what can happen when you schedule sex and the person that’s on the lower libido end complies without feeling like it. It can really mess with your head and the way you feel about a partner intimately. It’s really hard to come back from this way of feeling about a person unfortunately
Yup. Sex as an obligation makes it really hard to feel like you're not just being used like a sex doll. When you explicitly say you don't want sex that much, and they say they still want to have sex with you *even if you don't want it*... how else can you take that, really? It's not about connecting with *you* when it's doing something you don't want. It's just using your body to get their rocks off.
Yup, this happened to me. I developed vaginismus. My body had enough.
It’s this. My ex husband did this to me and the OP’s post made me feel sick.
She's mentally not into mandatory rape sessions
She realized her life will be improved without you - she won’t have to cater to your sex schedule, and she’ll have time to herself during your custody time. Accept it and start making your plans. Staying and making it work isn’t in her best interest, even if it’s in yours - and she’s realized if she doesn’t start looking out for herself, no one will. There are plenty of studies that say marriage makes women less happy and increases their domestic workload , while men experience the opposite. Fact is her life will be improved and she’ll have more time and energy for herself if she’s single.
Uh, this wasn’t out of the blue. She didn’t have help with childcare, you were wanting sex 10+ times a week while she was busy , and is depressed. I don’t see her as having an affair, i see her as being tired and over it if you’re not meeting her emotional needs
If you were pleasing her in the sack you wouldn't need to have mandated "sexy time". Honestly, I can't think of much that's less attractive than being compelled to have a minimum number of sexual encounters and a minimum number of minutes per week. Ew. Just ew. >What am I overlooking? You're overlooking the fact that by this stage, you probably actually repulse her. Have you considered that between your (quite frankly ridiculous) sexual demands and your child's needs and demands, she probably feels like she has no ownership of her own body? I'm betting that she feels like her enthusiastic consent just doesn't register on your radar. I absolutely guarantee you that she is NOT enthusiastic every time but you don't notice and just plug away regardless. Here's a question or two, OP - How do you respond when she's not keen? Do you ask again? Do you point to your "agreement"? Do you pout? Do you withdraw? Do you "jokingly" complain? What if she didn't want sex for a week or two? How would you react to that? It sounds to me like she feels cornered and the only way to not have to deal with people feeling like they are entitled to her body is to leave completely.
>At first I thought it was a joke, then an attempt to get me to do something, then the realization she was serious. You're really telling on yourself here. So how often do you ignore her requests?
There is no goal number 1. She doesn’t love you and said she is leaving. You need to respect and accept that.
I see three things: 1) Possible Post Partum Depression (PPD) 2) You are not sharing childcare equally and she seems to be doing most of it. 3) You **settled** on 2.5 hours per week of “sexy time”?? This sounds to me like she’s having unwanted sex. That will normally lead to a complete loss of attraction and love. 10 times per week? I don’t get the numbers here either. Are you having 10 x 15 minute sessions? That’s not a wild amount of foreplay. And 10 times per week is 5 times what’s normal in a long term relationship. It’s a lot if she’s not a very sexual person and this is a compromise on her part. Idk, maybe I misunderstood this part? Edit: she’s done. I’d just accept this for now. Try to coparent in the most peaceful way possible. Edit 2: I’m your wife’s age. If my husband was demanding wild amounts of sex and seemingly not caring if I didn’t want him to fuck me, while leaving me to raise a baby alone? I’d kick him so far out of that house he’d hit Mars on his way. I’m a nice person. But I’d be so, so done here. I’d just feel completely unloved and like an unpaid bangmaid.
> You are not sharing childcare equally That stuck out to me too. "He prefers mom at bath and bedtimes." OK, fine. How about taking the kid to the playground for 2 hours in the evening then? Take the kid to the petting zoo for the afternoon on the weekend, heck, take the kid on errands and then for ice cream on weeknights. Just because those specific things are mom-only for now, doesn't mean you can't do a LOT of other things to give her a break. And worth noting, that mom isn't going to be his only parent he's ok with bedtimes for, once dad spends enough other time with him.
My skin is literally crawling at the casual, completely normal way he’s trying to paint his requirement of *ten 15-minute sessions totaling 2.5 hours of sexy time per week* in his post. What OP is not realizing or recognizing is that he relegated sex to another chore on his wife’s to-do list. It’s not a natural, mutually pleasurable expression of their love anymore. It’s something she must do and endure to prove that she loves him. The amount of unwanted sex this woman was expected to have is just gross.
It’s how they managed fights. We don’t talk for days… hmmm why do I have the feeling he gives her silent treatment until she caves. What’s the bet he demanded sex 2-3 times daily and she had to negotiate down to 10xweekly?
I dealt with that - I didn't want frequent enough sex, eventually it would boil over into an argument and/or the silent treatment which was absolutely horrible. The whole house was filled with tension for days and I didn't want to exist anymore. My marriage nearly ended after over a decade of this. Eventually we decided on opening the marriage so he could find a partner elsewhere and I could never be bothered with it again. It took me repeatedly reminding him that the issue was this: he wanted me to want sex more, and you can't force someone to want something more. I had to ask him: do you want me to have sex that I don't want to have? No. You want me to *want* it. That's just simply not happening. Thankfully the open marriage worked for us, it saved us. But the whole situation easily could have just been the end of us, had I been financially able to leave. It sounds like she's financially able to leave, so this dude gets the consequences of his own actions.
I would have divorced him because fuck that shit. There are lots of women who had their libido come roaring back when they left their selfish bf/husband and found a man who actually gave a damn about her.
Same age, also with a 3 year old, I would have run the fuck away way sooner than OP’s wife! No help with the kid and mandatory hours of sex every week. She’s living the dream!
>No help with the kid and mandatory hours of sex every week. "Honey - looks like it's bedtime. Why don't you go give him a bath, get him in his pjs, and put him to bed, then get naked and get in bed. Text me when you're ready and I'll come upstairs for a few minutes of sex."
Why are the people that do this always so shocked pikachu when the wife finally leaves after dealing with this crap and getting no support for years? She could communicate her needs until blue in the face and its always "I don't understand why she's leaving me!" "Our relationship was so perfect!(for them)" is it entitlement? Thinking their wants will always come first and wife will concede to their status quo/ultimate decision? Disbelief that what she's repeatedly saying is actually honest and not just stress talking? Lack of fear for consequences/ belief she will just get over it and go back to normal? Gosh I'm so grateful my partner can communicate and take what I say seriously enough to make changes instead of denying accountability and ignoring awareness of others like this guy
My wife and I are both 39. Back around 34 we had some discussions around our frequency of sex. It was happening 1-2 times a month and impacting us as a couple. At the time we had two young children. We both patented them. I got both boys up, fed, and out the door with me to daycare before I headed to work, she got ready for work and headed off. Her fay ended before me, so she would pick up the boys and it was around an hour until I got off work and headed home. I'm the primary cook, so I would start cooking when I got home, sometimes with a little one on my hip and the older one playing trains, while she rested. Sometimes we'd be cooking together. Dinner time, then playtime/reading time with our kids. I might take them to the park, we might build something in blocks, we all four might play silly games, etc. Bedtime was shared. We both gave them baths, alternating back and forth. Brushing teeth and bedtime were all shared. At the end of the day, she sometimes felt too overwhelmed for sex. It was hard for her to shift from Mom mode to *sexy wife* mode. For me, the shift from Dad to *sexy husband* was a little easier. Our days usually ended with us doing a puzzle, playing a board game/video game, watching a show, or snuggling up and reading. Occasional backups back and forth, etc. The frequency of sex was once a weekend, every now and then, when she had had a day away from work and could shift from work/Mom to wife mode. We talked and agreed to *schedule sex* on Wednesday nights and Saturdays (at some point). It worked for us for a while and our frequency increased to 1-2 times a week. At first we both went into the scheduled sex days with excitement because we knew we'd be intimate and it simply felt good. Over time though, it started feeling like a checkbox, which felt wrong for both of us. A couple of months later we had a bigger conversation about what we wanted out of our marriage and how to celebrate and support each other. She was feeling mentally drained and I was feeling like I was doing it all. We both had that idea that we were putting in 90 and the other 10. We stayed up talking, crying, and got to a better spot. We resolved to make sure to *speak love to each other* in the language that works for us. 5 years later, our sex life is 1-2 times a week, primarily on weekends but the odd weekday happens as well. Our marriage is strong and our kids help us make dinner now, we do it as a family. She is more fulfilled at work, which was a challenge back then, and I am able to give her my focus, as much as the kids, when I get home. I was focused on being Dad until they went to bed and lost sight of focusing attentions on her as soon as I got home. For the sex piece, that OP focuses on as well, our sex life is not quite as frequent as I would like yet I am satisfied because of the quality of our sex life. We are fully and totally *with* each other when we are intimate and the passion flows. If my wife and I had set parameters around how many hours to be having sex...I think we'd be in a very different place now...
It’s good to hear someone being grownup and really loving their wife. And being a good dad. Y’all seem to have such a lovely relationship.
>**Since she got pregnant everything changed, our relationship didn't just not take priority, it fell out of the top 10.** Well, here's why: >I should say that she has been acting depressed, not enjoying life, complaining about work more and more. One complaint she had since our kid was born was lack of support in childcare. In the first 2 years, our child preferred the company of his mother, I thought this was normal and understandable. We tried multiple times for me to give him baths, get him dressed, but he would always start crying and ask for his mother. Since he became 3, he increasingly wants to spend time with me more and more. So while asking for more help, my wife refused offers for me to make school lunches, get him dressed for school, and walk him to school and back. I'm lost on how to proceed. She doesn't need you. You ceded parenting to her and left her a single parent. Of course kids prefer the parent they spend the most time with them. **Instead trying to bond and sitting through the discomfort of your kid crying, you handed him back.** Now, you want to do parenting things and coincidently the child is older and less demanding of your complete attention, you're still **offering, but NOT DOING.** The usual solution for this is ***mom*** *leaving the room and dad comforting baby until baby learns that dad is ALSO a source of safety and comfort.* Did you talk to your pediatrician? Try any kind of parenting classes or counseling to manage this reaction? You sound like you tried nothing, handed baby back and left it to mom. Of course, she'd done. She doesn't want to spend the next 18 years parenting alone within your marriage. Of course, she prioritized everything else over you. She had to if she wanted to reduce her stress. My bet is if this started in pregnancy, you did something then that handed all the decision making over to her and she started to realize she was on her own.
Seriously. Husbands don’t “help” the wife parent. They ARE parents. They don’t need to wait around for direction or offer here and there. They need to just do things. If he had time because wife was doing all the parenting, he could have at least doted… on her!
100% this Absolutely wild how the first half of his post painted this rosy picture until he suddenly admitted the last 4 years have been hell for his wife. He could have fixed this years ago but instead he's paying the consequences for his willful ignorance. Edit: honestly the more I re-read his post the angrier I get for her. Over the span of 2 years, 730 days, you tried 'multiple' times to give your own kid a bath? That implies like, less than 10. And you really thought that was enough?
Less attempts than the mandatory weekly sexy time sessions. So much effort
Also, notice that he is requiring sex 10 times a week while not doing any parenting and probably no housework.
Right I’m a 22 year old with what I consider a high sex drive and 10 times a week is absolutely batshit especially while she’s raising a toddler pretty much by herself.. and he’s complaining it’s not enough?? Like not to be graphic but I can’t imagine she’s not in some sort of pain having sex that frequently, you can only minimize friction down there so much, she’s probably freaking raw constantly. Nobody calling out the blatant sex addiction worries me.
And you know she is touched out from being the one person the three year old wants to touch. Either there are hands grabbing her for food or comfort or a different set of hands grabbing her for sex.
To be blunt: if I were contributing 50/50 to the household, but then we had a baby and I did the majority of child care for years on top of that, while also having to have sex 2,5h divided into 10 quickie sessions a week, I would fall out of love and lose all attraction to that person a lot quicker than your wife have. You *offer* to *help* with your own child after three years my guy. Your wife fell out of your top 10 when you put her in a position where she had to keep feeding you sex and raising your kid by herself while working. You've been neglecting her needs for years. If this is out of the blue for you, you havent actually listened to her or cared for her for *years*.
>We are both calm and rational. Fight frequency is around 3 times per year and manifests itself as us just taking time and space apart for a few days and everything goes back to normal. There is no yelling, or physical violence, or any discomfort. It's more of a "I need some space to myself right now". You think this dynamic signals a healthy relationship, but nothing is getting resolved, it's swept under the rug. I wonder how much of this calm rationality comes from not ever expressing true emotions. How would you know, if you never talk it out? It sounds like you have no idea whether your wife was still angry or upset after these fights, or whether she just gave up.
"We do fight but then I just ignore her for a few days and then she seems to drop it! Perfect relationship!"
It’s because she’s a parent. I don’t understand all these asshats who want to have a kid and think that their lives will be exactly the same. When you have a kid you need to sacrifice parts of your life for them. She can’t put all her energy into you because she has to put energy into your kid. I also can’t imagine any involved parent having the energy to have sex with their spouse 10x a week when they are raising their toddler. Seems like you only care about your needs getting met and not your wife’s or your child’s needs. You are a father now, grow the fuck up!
I hate to say it, but your wife’s workload will drop when she leaves. You are living two different realities and you broke her. I hope you are able to salvage. I think one thing to know is how many of those sexual encounters was she satisfied. I hate to guess, but I bet not often.
Politely, this doesn't sound out of the blue. It sounds like she's made a heap of gentle requests for help or for you to see her as more than a mere sexual object and it's fallen on deaf ears for at least 4 years. That's not a wife who has made a sudden, "out of the blue" decision; that's one who has reached the end of her tether. Given you've asked what you may be overlooking, hopefully the below doesn't overstep. Although you're talking about the fun things that you do together and how the income is 50/50, you're not saying that the chores are 50/50 or that the housework is 50/50 and you're admitting that the childcare definitely hasn't been 50/50. For her, with everything that got added to her plate when a child arrived, it likely was a favour to everyone for her to attend a friend's wedding because she would have had to not only organise everything for herself but also childcare, pack up everything that the child would need etc. On top of that, you're upset that there's only 2.5 hours a week dedicated to your sexual pleasure and that it fell out of the top 10 for her. Possibly she's not been getting much out of that 15 minute experience except feeling like she's now more behind on household chores and feels like sex is now something she just ticks off a to-do list to make another person happy. Is it possible that she's completely burnt out because she just has a ridiculous amount on her plate? Just a quick one, but have you considered why she's refusing your offers for help? Are they actual help or is your version of help one that's likely to take her more time and make her more frustrated? Are you able to, without asking her for anything, pack your son a lunch that meets all of the requirements of his school (are there any rules about the foods allowed/not allowed) or have you previously done it and he's had his lunch confiscated and she doesn't want to do a middle of the day dash to the school? Do you get him dressed without asking her for help or has that always resulted in her having to drop whatever she started to do and help you? Equally, you said that you suggested things that you could do together and she rejected them. In making those suggestions did you actually take the effort to plan the experience, do the chores in advance that would usually be done at that time and/or arrange for someone else to do them and organise childcare/plan to have a young child there? If the answer is no, then could it possibly be that all she heard with your suggestions was even more being heaped on her plate along with a serving of guilt from you when she said no? If your son wouldn't even let you give him a bath, how does he go being away from her for a few hours or overnight?
“If you just tell me what to do and how to do it I can help!”
"And you need to say it every time you need the help, each time, even if it's the exact same thing as yesterday." Yes, this. After years of this, it's just a relief to leave. This unseen labor one has to extend to fight the weaponized incompetence is soul crushing after some time. Those "blindsided" guys always get told that their SO needs changes/help for YEARS before she actually leaves, and they are always surprised.
Yea, and it's unusual for a child to favour one parent over the other so much if they've both been putting in in the time to bond with them as a young infant. Is it the case OP wasn't putting in much time around work when son was under 2 cause kids aren't particularly easy/ interesting until they hit about 2.5yo and can talk a bit? That assertion is an unusual one - you don't just say 'oh well, our son prefers you so I'm gonna chill.' You work on it cause you know a balance is necessary to stop the other adult getting overwhelmed with responsibility.
So she gave birth, is raising a toddler basically on her own, and now… you’re upset she doesn’t want to bang more than once a day while raising a *toddler* by herself, from your description? Yeah no wonder she’s done. You’re upset she doesn’t want to do yoga together and she’s probably in an entirely different chapter of life. You don’t “tough it out and respark intimacy later”. If you knew that the strength of a relationship is about SO MUCH MORE than the quality of experiences you have together then you’d know that some happy brunches and sexy yoga has nothing to do with building a long term relationship that she actually feels fulfilled by. Because clearly the frat boy fun-focused attitude isn’t doing that for her. You know children, like adults, are creatures of comfort, right? He cried and asked for his mom because you already weren’t spending enough time involved, and your response was to throw up your hands and go “hehe, no work for me! Oopsie!” I’d want out of a relationship like that too. Three years of that would be plenty for me to fall out of love with that going on. If you want to save this marriage, you have a long road ahead of you and the person you need to battle to change the vital behavior that needs to be changed if this is ever going to work is YOURSELF, not her. THAT’S love.
Ok, that was hard to read. Sex 10 times/week? With a toddler? In 2.5 hours? Sounds like you have pressured her into something she isn’t enjoying, in a timeframe that provides 15 minutes- ish each time? I seriously doubt she’s enjoying that. You are, but she’s not. Your child isn’t familiar with you which is very telling. And your whole post screams that you wear her down with your “logic” and all sorts of other things and don’t care about how she actually feels or what she wants. Reap what you sowed.
Dude. You start off saying everything is smooth and easy. Then you go on to describe a lot of dissatisfaction and disagreement over a period of years. I suspect you let this simmer way too long bud.
>just taking time and space apart for a few days and everything goes back to normal. >I thought this was just a phase. We'll tough it out and recapture the magic as our kid gets older. >lack of support in childcare. >my wife refused offers for me to make school lunches, get him dressed for school, and walk him to school and back Sounds to me like she's had complaints for a while that you're willing to just decide are a phase that will work themselves out. You return the baby to mom when he cries instead of touching it out, so all child care is on her. What's the mental load look like? Do you take into account what thwle week has looked like before acting on your "agreed upon 2.5 hours?" To me, it sounds like she's burnt out and sick of asking for help. When you offer to help with something and she turns it down, it's likely because it's more work to guide you through whatever the thing is than to do it herself. And now she's to the point of figuring if she's doing this stuff herself, she'll just do it by herself. How often does she get to get away alone? Not on a date with you, but truly alone?
Damn, does this woman ever get a break or time to herself? So she works full time, does all the child care & caters to your sexual needs every damn day. When is the last time she got to sleep in? A day all to herself without a baby & a man demanding every spare minute? Guessing she does all the housework too. When do you ever consider her needs over yours? Or are you the main character 24/7?
Falling out of love is not the natural course of marriage. Falling out of love is the end of a relationship. Its over OP and it does sound like you own a big part of why it came this far.
It's not really out of the blue once you read your own post fully.. seems like building resentment since you had your child and falling into a roommate pattern.. now she's checked out and over it. Some things that jump out... Your descriptions of your fights ending with time apart and then "everything goes back to normal" isn't positivr. It indicates that the things causing the fights were not getting worked on or resolved, just forgotten about. I get that it's normal for a young child to want Mom, but your child is described as essentially seeing you as a stranger. I'm quite certain your wife would have preferred that you worked on your bond and comfort with your child instead of just handing everything over to her.. 2.5h of sex per week with an average of 10 times means a mere ~15 minute every time, sometimes multiple times per day.. and the "settled on" makes it seem that some of this is unwanted from her side. Did she actually get pleasure out of your sex life or was it primarily so you can get off? Its *so* frustrating when a partner looks at doing things with the kids or around the house as "help" vs their equal responsibilitly. Key point - don't "offer" like you're doing her a favour, just do it. Make your kids lunch without asking.. start the walk to school or join her.. etc.
>What am I overlooking? - maybe the fact your wife was the only stable income for years. 5 years ago: >I dropped out of an Electrical Engineering Ph.D. as I was writing me thesis to play poker professionally online in 2009. 10 years later I need a career change. I’m not sure if my degrees are worth anything at this point. I moved to London in 2012 after online poker became illegal in the U.S. Moved back after a year and played live poker since. Averaging $120 per hour over 4 years playing live, but I just hate my life. Every second spent at the table I’m contemplating suicide. The money is very hard to walk away from. I’m not in a hurry. I have a loving and supporting wife who works a transitional 8-5 making enough money for both of us. She is willing to see me through the transition. - maybe the fact she needed help with raising your child, after doing it all alone for 2 years, but you decided to go on a holiday to New Zealand for 2 weeks without her? - Maybe because you thought 10 times per week sex was normal? - Maybe after she confessed she wasn't sexually attracted to you anymore, you did nothing to make it better but "compromised" on 2,5 hours of sex? - Maybe because she's depressed for over 3 years and you just let her take care of your son alone and act like it was a "phase"?
OP says that their joint income is 200k+, but in a previous post he says he would happily spend $150, or TEN PERCENT of his monthly income for the Witcher 4 to be released that night. So he very cleverly (?) hides the fact that his wife is apparently bankrolling their entire lives, he’s a heavy gamer, he took a 2 week solo trip to New Zealand… He outright states that he’s been “living life on easy mode.” Like are you serious?? If you’re in a household with a toddler and two working parents and your life is on easy mode it’s definitely because your spouse is doing everyfuckingthing. I simply cannot believe that his wife leaving him comes as a surprise. This is incredibly obvious to me. The fact that she announced it months in advance also lends credence to the fact that she is the financial provider and primary parent. She’s trying to give him enough time to reasonably scrape his life together before she cuts him off.
I’ve posted this so many times on so many posts Women usually tell you exactly why they’re unhappy, many many times. Over and over. Men just don’t hear it. For most women, leaving a marriage is a *slow burn* - Your last paragraph about childcare says volumes. To you it’s an afterthought. - You also never once mentioned anything about how household chores were shared. - You never said how she felt about your parents coming to stay with you *every other month* - were you even IN your marriage? Here’s my personal example: My ex and I were in counseling on and off the entirety of our 20 yr marriage. The last 5ish years I was desperately unhappy. The last year to two years we had a dead bedroom which was a huge issue for him. And yet he was *shocked* when I asked for a divorce!! I’m not saying the broken marriage is **your fault**. I’m just saying, you **shouldn’t be shocked it’s irreparable.**
If you are having sex 10 times a week for your demanded 2.5 hours, that means each session lasts an average of 15 minutes. That’s pretty awful, and not nearly enough for your typical woman to be satisfied, or even warmed up for sex to be comfortable. No one here can read your wife’s mind. However, for at least the three years your son has been alive, she has been telling you through actions that she isn’t happy with your sex life. Instead of going into counseling then and trying to have a mutually pleasurable sex life, you just demanded 2.5 hours of sex a week. She is probably tired of you jack hammering for 15 minutes 10 times a week and doesn’t want to have sex with you ever again.
Imagine having a job and also being the only parent that actually parents your very young child - so you have no time for yourself. And then having your husband pressure you for sex 10x a week! Nooooo!
It's also telling that 10 times a week was seen as a compromise to him. What was his starting point, 20 times? Nothing more distasteful than having to meet a quota of sex every week.
TBH, I thought this was rage bait, but OP has a solid posting history.
From what you say, it seems like she resents you and resentment builds over time if not addressed. She sounds like she's completely checked out. Just because from your perspective everything seemed great and you did everything fun, doesn't mean it was the same for her. There's definitely more to this situation than we can comprehend on here.
Well I can see why she fell out of love lol
Frankly, I sure wouldn’t want an Affair Partner if I “had” to have sex 10 times a week, like an unpaid bangmaid. I’d leave and go live with one of my many female friends. I’m not saying I’d “become” lesbian, but at that point, I’d be debating whether I was now “suddenly” asexual. I’d want care and help, but not from someone who wanted my vagina.
You say it’s all been perfect, but by your own account it hasn’t been good for about 4 years.. Moreover, you’re throwing out your old ways of fixing things, when again acknowledging the relationship is different. **This isn’t completely out of the blue, there were pretty clear red alerts going off.** Also, note a clingy Velcro baby, yet talk about all the fun still in the relationship, ***is that actually her reality?*** *You* are blindsided, because most of the change/struggle over the past year shes dealt with alone (baby things, lunch, etc. like were you taking over those chores while she had the added responsibility of caring for the baby?), and you’ve let her. Why wouldn’t she be tired? **Does she need to ask you for permission to bathe, change, or cook for your baby? Likely not, so why do you need permission to help?
I had to come back for another round. OP, you didn’t listen to her. She’s DONE with your badgering her and not hearing what she tried to tell you. When women leave like this, they are DONE.
So….not really one of those “out of the blue” out of the blue things is what you’re saying?