Close to the END of my rope...

I have been in a relationship for about 8 years. We are now married. But I am at the end of my rope with our relationship as we have so many issues. One of the problems is that she says sex is not important to her, that she could take it or leave it. And it shows. We have sex once a week or every two weeks. Mostly about every two weeks, sometimes once in a month. Some may say that is enough, but not enough for me. She even committed the cardinal sin of telling one of my friend's wife that she does not like having sex with me, if you can believe that, so uncool. Of course, my friend's wife told me and then went on to hit on me which I thought was kinda funny. Although she is HOT, but she is my friend's wife and that would not be cool. Plus the fact that I am also married. She also tells her friends things when we argue, as if she needs to report to everyone our details. That just pisses me off to no end, especially when I think of her telling one friend she does not like having sex with me. I have to tell you, that is a tough one to overcome, I am struggling with that. Who wants to have sex with someone who is not also enjoying it? I am in my late 40's, not a bad looking guy and girls in their 20's and early 30's are attracted to me if you can believe that. I try and stay in good shape and am not perfect as I have gained about 10 pounds if that over the years. But not more than that. My hair has gotten salt and pepper and for the longest time she kept telling me to put color in it because I looked old so I would put a little of that stuff that takes away some of the grey, but still leaves some of it on. We have 3 daughters in the 3-7 year range. Here is the deal, when we met our sex was awesome. All the time. She loved giving and receiving oral sex. Now she considers sex a chore and get's extremely irritable when I talk about it and want to initiate it, as if she is disgusted with me. She is in her late 30s, I am close to 50. In regards to oral sex, which I LOVE LOVE LOVE, she will NOT allow it or allow me to even come close to that area unless it is with my manhood and occasional hand stroking of her. Other then that, I can forget it as far as she is concerned. We had some financial issues for a while in which we struggled, but we made it through and within a few months we will be debt free and living good. I know it stressed her out, but we made it. She is a stay at home mom who loves to take care of the girls, goes to their school and volunteers and spends days at the beach with the girls during the week while I am working. I have done a lot of cool things in the house and back yard that it is like a haven for our kids, a park and entertainment place for the whole family. Many months I would come home from work and go straight to work on the house. Yet everything I do, she looks for what I did wrong or how a board is crooked. I am not kidding, she literally looks for defects rather than the whole overall picture. And then, when I want to watch the last half of a game, she says I do not do anything in the house and talks about how she should hire someone to do the things I am "supposed to do". I just get pissed when she says things like that because I bust my butt for everything we have, I feel like she is so ungrateful and just takes things for granted. She sometimes goes out with her mom friends and I stay home with the girls so she can have a night off. Many times we fall asleep watching TV and when she gets home she walks in and immediately starts complaining because I did not do the dishes and how the girls are not in their jammies when they are asleep. Keep in mind that I do the dishes every night, it is a chore I do because I want to show her my appreciation for her awesome dinners she always makes. It is hard to think that she would come home with such a rotten attitude, rather than come home happy because she had a night off with friends. FYI: I KNOW she is with her mom friends, I know them and she sends me texts of them hanging out all the time when they are out to their dinners, so I am not worried about anything like infidelity. We live in an amazing area in an exclusive neighborhood and home which I bought before I met her. There is a reason I bring this up, I am not bragging, I promise. The reason why I bring it up is because I think she is in love with our home, with our area, our lifestyle, and not with me. She constantly says how great it is here, how lucky we are to live here, etc. She also brings up a lot how she is not on the title of our home or on my cars. I know it is trivial, but it makes me wonder if she is more interested in that then me. I cannot begin to tell you how unhappy I am. If it was not because of my kids, she would be gone because I would have asked her to leave a long time ago. The lack of sex is killing me, it is making me angry and resentful of her. We had a conversation recently where I was asking her why she did not want sex and she said she could take it or leave it. So I told her it was important to me, that I was still in my prime and she said I should see a specialist or doctor to cure my sexual cravings because maybe I had an issue. I told her that this was silly, that she should be in her sexual prime and she said no, that her sexual prime came and went. Sometimes she says that I need to do things for her so that she feels more loved which will lead to more sex. I do everything she asks and still, same thing, same results. Plus, what is the deal with always having to work for it, always having to do special things just to get sex. I don't get it. I have always treated her well, great actually, but every day I am more and more angry and resentful of her because of this. I have a hard time leaving her because my daughters would suffer tremendously and my kids are my life. Any thoughts on the matter? Am I being ridiculous?

Put the internet to work for you. via Personal Recipe 2629979