36M marriage issues with 38f

r/

Some context first: I have been with my wife for about 11 years and married for about 8.5 years. She has always had a bit of a temper but she is generally a kind person. She moved to the USA with me after we married. She and I met in her home country in Asia when I was teaching English. I’m 36 m and she is 38 f.

The meat: There are two sort of issues in our marriage which I think that I was the catalyst for. I was using an app early in our marriage to sext with other women. There were no meetups. She found the app on my phone and nearly divorced me as a result. She stayed after I promised to make it up to her. Now onto the two issues.

First she treated me much worse for the couple years after catching me. She didn’t trust me and snooped through everything. I think that this is fine and she can still go through my phone whenever because I caused that. However, I expected her to eventually treat me better overall. I think she has after several years but it feels like it regressed the past year. I think there are contributing factors. She doesn’t feel safe in the USA. She misses food from her home country which we do eat often but she misses ease of access mainly. She also hasn’t worked in several years and I feel like her inability to do her old job of English Teacher is also making her feel worse.

The second issue is that our marriage is sexless now. Like many relationships we started like rabbits and slowly over the years it has gotten less and less. I believe it has been 2 years since we have had sex.

So I talked with her last night about how she has been quicker to anger with me lately over small things and our lack of intimacy. The conversation pretty much instantly spiraled to her thinking I want a divorce (which is on the table but I want to fix it if we can). She was real defensive and brought up my infidelity and also said she doesn’t want sex with anyone anymore. I don’t think my infidelity is the main cause of her lack of sex drive it was still good for sometime after that. The conversation went for a couple of hours and ended a little better than it began.

I am going to see how today goes when I get home.

My question is basically what do you think I should do? I do love my wife but I’m not sure if I can continue to deal with the anger. I also am not a super sexual person but going the rest of my life without sex or really any physical intimacy seems horrible.

Other details: We don’t have kids. We do own a home. We have 4 pets.

Tldr: talked with wife about her anger and our lack of sex. Didn’t go great. She says she is basically ace now. She did say she’d work on her anger at the very end.

Comments

  1. rosephase Avatar

    Have you tried therapy? Seems like some pretty massive issues and a history of hurt between you. A professional can help. Even if they help you to separate.

  2. Greedy_Dig_2107 Avatar

    I think the broken trust was just never repaired. Like yeah, she doubled down on keeping tabs on you and being angry at you and all that, which is just exhausting and is gonna kill any love an attraction that you have for eachother.

    Doubt she’s ace, she had a sex drive before, she just doesn’t feel attraction for you for some time now. The anger, all of it, it’s all related, it’s because she’s become detached from you and you’re both miserable, neither of you fulfilled in this marriage.

    Get into couples therapy, you need help with this.

  3. less_is_more9696 Avatar

    My guess is these issues are popping up because you havnt worked on healing after the infidelity incident. 

    Rebuilding trust and connection is not something done on auto pilot. You said you’d “make it up to her” but what have you done to rebuilt your relationship? To rebuild trust?

    Why were you sexting other women in the first place? That’s where I’d start. If I was your wife, I would want to see that you’ve done personal work (therapy etc) and you can articulate why this happened, so we can get to the root of the issue together. 

    Once the root of the issue is addressed, I would feel much more safe, happy, and secure. 

    Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to fully trust you and I would start to feel angry and resentful like your wife currently feels.