Hi Everyone,

Bit of a long story here but just wanted to get things off my chest. I'm a HL (M39) and my wife is a LL (F39). We have been together 16 years, married 14. I'm British and my wife is Burmese, we met out in Thailand through a mutual friend, my wife was a teacher and I was a photographer. We hit it off straight away and the first few years were great. Sex all the time, I couldn't wait to marry her etc. After we got married she moved to the UK and everything was great until we had been together for about 7 years and everything sort of slowed down. I was working a 9-5 office job and she was working as a chef in a restaurant and working evenings and weekends so we hardly got to see each other or spend quality time together. We had seen other couples split up with cheating and the pain that caused and didn't want that to happen to us. Instead to try and spice things up we decided to try swinging and on the whole really enjoyed it. It improved our sex lives together and it was fun playing with others too.

We had started trying for a baby as we both wanted a family, but it wasn't working for us. She would track her cycle then we would try like rabbits for a few days (which wasn't as sexy as you would imagine, I felt just like a sperm donor rather than an intimate partner and lover), then there would be the negative pregnancy tests and the tears until the whole cycle would begin again.

In the end we saw our Dr and went through 2 rounds of IVF which were unsuccessful. This was awful for me, but my feelings were consumed by how devastating it was for my wife. At the end of the 2nd round when we were doing a sort of final debrief, the doctor casually said that there had only ever been a 5% chance of the IVF working for us in the first place, something that no one had ever mentioned to us before. We essentially gave up on ever having kids, but a few months later we got pregnant naturally.

We were both over the moon and I was so excited about all these stories about how horny pregnant women got. Although that might happen for some women, it certainly didn't happen for my wife and that really was the start of our dead bedroom. She wasn't interested in sex during pregnancy, but I thought that I could tough it out. Then after birth she wasn't interested either, so I figured it was due to breastfeeding and being new parents etc. another 12 months and I can tough that out too, but of course that didn't happen. My wife didn't return to work after having the baby and I was working as the main bread winner. I worked for a veterans charity helping individual beneficiaries and between work and our relationship problems and being a new parent it all came a bit too much for me and I went off work with stress. My wife was always telling me that I didn't do enough but I was cooking, cleaning, changing nappies, working, studying, volunteering etc. I love my daughter so much and I was a hands on Dad since day 1. I also tried to support my wife to be a new mother as well so for example I would take the baby out on long walks to put her down for a nap and give my wife genuine respite time away from the baby.

The more I did, the worse I felt and the worse I felt the more I needed to do things. I was at breaking point and suicidal. I was going through therapy and the therapist encouraged me to talk to my wife and so one afternoon my mum took the baby whilst my wife and I went to this beautiful restaurant overlooking the river. I'll never forget talking to her and telling her how important it was for me to hear that I'm a good person, a good husband, a.good father. Her response "I'm not very good at lying". I was crushed. I sat there crying like a baby in the middle of the restaurant. I didn't even have the energy to stand up and walk out.

Eventually I got a bit better and returned to work. We got pregnant again, but then suffered a miscarriage and then got pregnant naturally again with our second daughter who has just turned 3.

I've tried putting the low libido down to pregnancy, then breastfeeding, then the contraceptive implant, but it just never returns. I don't feel loved, she says she loves me, but I don't feel it or see it. I know we are not quite as dead as some other bedrooms on her, we have sex maybe 2 or 3 times month on good months, maybe 6 weeks or so with nothing on other months.

We used to sext each other sending pictures, videos, texts, but now that has all gone. We still have a swingers profile and I chat to people on there and is a spark, and electric erotic energy. I used to have that with my wife, but now it's gone. I'll ask her to sext me, and she says that she will, and then doesn't. This isn't a one off, but has happened hundreds of times. Every single time she forgets or was too busy. It breaks my heart every time.

My wife started her own food business 2 years ago, so again is working nights and we have little quality time together, but at least she doesn't work weekends. The first year was really tough and although I was supposedly working a 9-5, mainly from home I was also helping her alot with shopping, prepping food, cleaning etc. Again it was all too much for my mental health so a year ago I quit my doctoral studies, quit my full time job and came to work for my wife. I was a lot less stressed, and although she had blamed her low libido on me being stressed, again nothing changed.

My wife has been supporting her family financially since we got married and as long as the bills get paid and we have a roof over our head we are not really that concerned about money. We have just got back from a 3 week trip Thailand to visit her family and for her mother to meet both grandchildren (she last met our 6yr old when she was only 6 months old). My wife and I had saved for a long time for this trip and it cost us a fortune. We both had a terrible time as the family all fought with each other, mainly over money. They are very poor over there and live in not much more than a tin shack down a dirt road and get their water from a well. I wanted to help out some of my wife's adopted siblings (who are 19-20) to make sure they had the right paperwork to not get arrested walking down the street (my mother in law was arrested twice in the 3 weeks we were there) and extorted by the local police, to get a better education etc. We have since got better documentation for my MIL so she won't get arrested, but trying to help the kids seems to have rubbed my MIL the wrong way and they are all fighting and I somehow seem to be the bad guy. All of this is happening in Burmese and my Burmese is limited to I rely on my wife to explain. However both whilst we were there, and now we have been home for a week. It's become clear to me that whatever issues she is going through with her family, she doesn't see me as part of the solution or someone worth discussing it with.

I feel like just a business partner, a co-owner. I don't feel like there is any marriage left apart a pretence of one.

Every few months we have "the talk" she promises to change, be better, show some affection, it last 24 to 48hrs and then back to normal again. There is no attraction from her, no passion, no lust, when we are intimate it's routine, functional, minimal. Hardly ever any oral, no new positions etc.

I'm just sick and tired of it. I love her and think she's gorgeous, but it's just breaking my heart every day.

Will it ever get better? Will it only get worse?