u/honestphantom

I [35M], have been married to my partner [34F], for 5 years. We have a toddler and for the past 2 years we haven't had any physical intimacy or sex (for clarification, i also include penetrative sex, or heavy petting/kissing etc. The most intimacy we tend to have is cuddling on the sofa from time to time).

I have tried to initiate intimacy with my partner a lot, both indirectly through suggestive touching, to directly trying to schedule sex as per her requests. Every time, these attempts end in rejections - she's either not in the mood, or its too hot, or she's in the luteal phase, or just about to come on her period (where she's not in the mood at all). We've had talks about the dead bedroom a lot, and the most recent conversation happened at the beginning of this year, when she told me very directly that her attraction and desire was waning due to a variety of factors that were partly to do with her feeling she was taking on more of the mental load than me, and that my own behaviours (particularly relating to lack of ambition, planning and executing in my personal life, partly a result of losing quite a big contract in TV production in 2024) had made her feel less attracted to me. She still loved and cared about me, but the physical desire just wasn't there. Since then, I've really stepped up to take on the vast majority of the mental load, implementing systems at home to keep everything running and functional, meals cooked, laundry done etc. She regularly goes out with friends, to yoga, and gets at least an hour and a half a night to pursue her own solo time.

This question isn't about whether she ought to have sex with me or not – that's her choice. But while there is still no intimacy, i do need to figure out how to meet my own sexual needs. I have no desire to transgress out of the marriage, and while I used to masturbate with my own imagination, the truth is that I've actually forgotten a lot of the hot times I had with my wife at the beginning of our relationship. As a result, I have resorted to watching porn, several times a week. My rationale is that I can jerk off within 5 minutes, get rid of the sexualised energy that's been building, and then get on with the rest of the day without feeling resentment or anger.

I usually do this when everyone's asleep. The other day, ,my wife couldn't go to sleep, and she stayed in bed. When i came out of the bathroom, she asked if i was okay because "I spent quite a long time in the bathroom". I said I was fine, and that i didn't really notice the time, but perhaps it seemed long because I was tired and slow. She responded by saying "well, I hope you weren't watching porn in there!". We talked a bit more (and while I didn't deny it, I didn't exactly say I was either), and she mentioned it because a friend of hers is dealing with marital issues after catching her husband watching porn and discovering that he has something of a "porn addiction". I don't know what their marriage is like, but it did imply that my wife wouldn't want me watching porn and would probably be quite upset if she found out I was.

Here's the issue – I feel horrible about keeping this from her, and I also feel awful that I've resorted to this despite, imo, my best efforts to try to rekindle something of a sex life for us, after all this time (There are couples who divorce because of sexless marriages for far less time, and recently, a film called "The Invite" focuses on a couple who haven't had sex in a year, and this is presented as a huge red flag). This isn't a case of preferring porn stars to her, or desiring other kinds of women or younger women etc. The porn i watch is pretty mild and milquetoast, and I think i'm far more attracted to the idea of someone wanting to have sex, than the sex itself. But I also don't want to keep trying to convince my wife to have sex, only to feel bad about potentially being coercive, or the continued humiliation of rejection. Watching porn also gives me some sense of control over my own internal sex life, and the absence of it, to me, means that ultimately my wife gets to decide when and how it is expressed and engaged with, which I know will end up leading to more resentment.

I'd like some thoughts and advice from people who have been in similar situations, about how they would navigate this. Is it the case that I'm still making amends for not taking enough of the mental load, and that I just need to suck it up and wait it out? Is porn watching somewhat more permissable in this instance? Or does it still classify as cheating, regardless? And also, what are the alternatives? (I have thought about using my imagination some more, but when I've tried i've ended up imagining other scenarios that either involve people I used to date, or people from my past who i've found attractive, and this somehow feels worse than watching two professional porn actors who I have no real attachment to).

tl;dr : Have not had sex in two years, despite trying to initiate and be suggestive. Have been using porn to manage my sexual urges and energy, but wife has suggested that she would be against this if she knew. Would like some advice on how to manage sexual urges without using porn or fantasising about other people.

I recently got through the entire show, and having had some time to digest the finale, one thing that seems quite clear to me is that the show is superficially about restaurants and the restaurant industry, especially in the first season. But as time went on – and I'd say, probably from season 3 onwards, it seems clear that the show also seems to be a commentary on the show itself – and by extension, about the TV industry itself.

There have been a lot of debates about whether The Bear is a comedy or drama, whether it's prestige or if it just uses good cameras, and whether the experimental, more artistic episodes, really 'fit' into the series, or if these were attempts to add unncessary gloss and flair. One of my favourite episodes is also the most controversial of these – S3E01. I was watching this with my wife, and she left the room half way through, saying that she was bored and that it wasn't really what she expected having loved the first two seasons. It wasn't that it was *bad* to her, but she said it was needlessly artsy, in a way that seemed to be seeking awards and validation from the TV industry itself, rather than to be enjoyed by a general audience who get 30 minutes or so to watch a show after they've put their kid to sleep.

Weirdly enough, her comments on s3e01 aren't too dissimilar to what's happening in the universe of the show itself. At this point, the restaurant goes from a down-to-earth sandwich shop to an exclusive, fine dining establishment, with The Beef being tacked onto The Bear, mostly to keep the fancier part of the restaurant running. There's some uncertainty about the direction the place is going, and whether Carmy is being needlessly artistic and too focussed on Michelin stars and validation, over the basic job of feeding the diners. As the seasons go on, I think this tension plays out more, with big overarching questions about whether Cicero really wants to keep funding the restaurant despite how successful it is (as a TV producer myself, ive worked on shows that have been v successful but got killed after a couple of years because monetarily it didn't make sense, according to guys that look and sound like Computer), what happens when people outgrow the shows they're on (JAW taking on larger, movie roles that conflicted with The Bear's shooting schedule I think), and the challenges of running the restaurant as expectations, internally and externally, become more demanding and near impossible to meet.

The thought really clicked at the end of the last season, as Ebra sets up The Beef as a franchise, not through family restaurants, but ghost kitchens – abstract, detached places in which a satisfactory product, designed to be quickly consumed, by people we'll never know and meet and never really grow a fondness for, but nevertheless goes to fund the higher quality material that get more attention and awards buzz. In some ways to me, it reflects the state of broadcasting, in which high quality programming relies on a mishmash of private funding and subsidies to get off the ground, and its survival is dependent on the continued, high volume production of slop designed to be scrolled past and watched passively. It's a reality that most people in the industry hate (similar to restauranteurs and ghost kitchens) but is nevertheless part of our economic reality.

Maybe i'm jumping the gun, but i wonder if any of you saw the show meta-textually upon a re-watch, or have thoughts on whether Storer et al. are making commentaries on the TV industry as a whole?

Posting here for some accountability and hoping to regularly update.

I've been married for 5 years [34M], and have a young child. In the past 2 and a quarter years, my wife and I have not had sex. We have barely kissed, hug mostly because we realise we haven't for a while, or if one of us is going away from home. Initially, I thought the dead bedroom issue was because we had a child, who was quite demanding and for most of his early first year, didn't sleep. Having a child has affected our relationship, but the truth is, we werent having a lot of sex even before the kid was concieved, we got into a lot of arguments about things relating to housework, planning dates and outings, general effort in the relationship etc.

I admit that I wasn't really on it in the first couple of years of getting married, and I've apologised to her profusely for it. I would say that in the past couple of years, I've changed a lot in terms of being more organised, taking on the majority of housework tasks, childcare, and generally trying to lift some of her mental load. But I've also grown frustrated that despite putting in way more effort, this hasn't really been met by any attempt to rekindle some intimacy.

Recently, my wife and I were clearing out our closets and she discovered some lingerie at the back of her drawers. I made a joke that it was perhaps a gift from god, and that we were getting a divine sign telling us that we should maybe have sex. I meant it half joking, but my wife didn't respond beyond a hum. So I asked her whether she ever thought about having sex again, whether she missed it or if she missed me. And for the first time, we had quite an honest conversation – or at least, she was quite frank with me. She basically said that she had lost a lot of attraction to me, partly because she was angry about the first years of our marriage and how we wasted a lot of time because of my own selfishness and ego. But what surprised me more, though perhaps it should have been obvious, was that she wasn't really excited about me as a person. She said that over the past couple of years, I hadn't really put much effort into myself – I wasn't looking after myself physically (A baby did make this difficult, but I wasn't going to make any excuses directly) or mentally (phone scrolling and a lot of screen time), and this affected how i acted and moved in the real world, whenever we'd go to friends and family events I would be too distracted by whatever was on my phone.

She also said that I was no longer excited about life – that it had been stagnant and in turn, I also lacked the ambition that made her attracted to me when we met. Now, at the time we met, I was a fairly successful TV news producer, had published a book that won a couple of prizes, and had a lot of accolades. The pandemic kind of killed a lot of my career trajectory, and while things are currently fine, I do admit that I have become quite disillusioned by my work and industry. It's meant that I've tried to pivot into other career avenues and projects, only to abandon them fairly quickly. My wife gave the example of another book I started to write, where I started off pretty excited, took two weeks off parenting to go research and interview people, only to lose faith in it, and myself really, and come back home depressed and feeling like a failure. My wife said that while she understood why that might have happened, that the feeling of helplessness and not having agency or control of my life was making me sound cynical and that this was unattractive to her.

Most of all, she said, I didn't get things done, including things I said I would do, and this has led to her not finding me attractive. This ranges from the book, to general house DIY, contacting people and general admin. I often put things off or in some cases, don't remember to do them at all. And this has all contributed to an image of me that is detached, despondent, unreliable, unambitious and uncharismatic. No wonder, then, that she wouldn't be enthusiastic about wanting to have sex with me.

I was upset about what she said, and we haven't spoken about it for the past few days while I've tried to gather my thoughts. It does feel like a lot, and initially I was angry because it does feel like she's asking me to change everything about myself, including fairly legitimate critiques, in order to make her feel attracted to me again. But I've also realised the anger isn't getting me anywhere. I need a new plan to address the above, and to execute it in a way where at best, she finds me attractive again and we develop a healthy and exciting sex life before we get too old, but at worst, she decides were too far gone and files for divorce, but I've developed enough to be confident I can move forward and have a life worth looking forward to.

To that end, I'm spending the next day or two working out how to execute a self-improvement plan for the rest of this year, with a goal of:

1.) Losing some weight and building muscle
2.) Reducing my phone screen time to an hour a day (with the aim to get that reduced more next year)
3.) Building systems at home to track housework/chores etc. to get them done thoroughly and efficiently
4.) Finishing a draft of my book, or actively working on a different book project (and treating this seriously, like an actual job)
5.) Being a better dad and building rituals with my kid
6.) Being more active in rebuilding my marriage – scheduling check-ins, date night ideas, planning a family vacation.
7.) Re-building a social life! I feel like so much of getting this isolated is that I just dont keep in active touch with my friends and it would be good to spend regular time expanding a social life beyond my wife and kid.

This is all pretty ambitious, and if im honest I don't really know how to start when it comes to planning. So i'd be keen to hear from people who've also taken on a challenge like this, on how they did it while staying sane, and not losing faith.

I [35M] have a 2 year old boy, and my wife [32F] and I got into an argument the other week because she believes that I'm not spending enough 'quality' time with my son.

Now, just as context: In terms of time with my son, I spend a lot of it with him. I am a freelancer who mostly works at home (a change I made when my son was born so that I could be around during my wife's 12 month maternity leave), and I handle his mornings, meals, bathtimes, most bed times and night feeds if he wakes up. The issue isn't about how much time I spend with him, but *how*.

My son goes to kindergarten currently (we live in Europe so I think that's what its called, otherwise known as 'nursery') 2 days a week, and then my wife has him solo one day a week and I have him solo one day a week. I was really excited about this period, because for the first year of his life, we mostly spent time with other parents groups, which I found dull and tedious, or at local playgroups, some of which are a lot better than others, but can get repetitive. I take my kid to the library most days to read, but I was keen to spend our solo day in the city (we live in the suburbs but to get into the capital is about a 30 minute train ride), and to take him to art galleries, museums etc. In some of the museums, he can get out and walk/run around, and there are specific kids areas. In most, however, my son would have to either stay seated in his pram or be held by me.

Art and culture is important to me, as someone who works in the creative industries, and also didnt grow up around much of it. When I had a child I was adamant that I would expose them to this stuff when they were young, not least because thats how they get an appreciation for these places as they grow up.

But my wife thinks that this is a waste of time. She says that my son is too young to really be interested in 'looking at paintings' and that he needs to be playing as much as possible, which means that I should be booking playgroups, going to soft plays, parks, or specific classes designed to teach them how to read and speak. She says that I am using my solo days with him to actually go do the things I want, and using him as a cover.

To me, this is not true. Yes, I want to go see the exhbit, but I also saw it as time that my son and I spend together and hopefully we'll bond over. We go to the museum, and then we go to a park for a bit, maybe eat lunch at a nice cafe, or go see a friend who also has kids. But my wife believes that my priority as a parent should be my son's development in line with his kindergarten's objectives, and that not doing these things means im placing the burden onto her to teach him motor skills etc.

Maybe i'm seeing it incorrectly, and would be keen to hear your experiences. I do feel like ive had to give up a lot over the past few years and especially after having a child, and maybe subconsciously she's right. But I also assumed that going to galleries and museums were sort of one of the main things you did as a parent to young children?

Just wondering if anyone thinks there's a link between Gracie's music and Cloverfield? It's strange that nobody has asked her about the future of the franchise, or the show that has been in development for so long. It'd be cool if she made a song for a soundtrack of an upcoming release.

I (35M) have felt stagnant for the past few years and could use some advice.

For over a decade, I had a fairly successful career in news, and later in TV. I worked at newspapers, news broadcasters, rose up to be a senior producer on one of Europe's popular nightly news channels. When the news business was tanking due to social media companies upending the model in which news was funded, I was lucky enough to move sideways into TV, first as a commissioner at a leading podcast studio (which tanked during covid) and then working on a couple of HBO shows, one of which did make it to series, and the other which ended up getting stuck on the cutting room floor.

But things dried up a few years ago, around the time I had my first kid. I took 6 months of full time paternity leave, which I then extended due to my wife's PPD. When I 'returned' to work, the project had been on was cancelled, and since then I've been freelancing as a podcast and radio producer and doing some consulting work, while my wife has a formal corporate job. I've applied for a few journalism related gigs, but often get rejected for being over-qualified, or in some cases, the work offered isn't particularly appealing, doesn't pay well for the hours asked of me, and are something you'd usually offer to someone at the start of their career. All of which is to say, while I can sort of get by doing podcasts at the moment, I do think I've kind of reached the end of the road when it comes to working in media.

I'm stuck on what to do now. I have a degree in history and economics from the LSE, and a research masters in media and politics from Oxford, which I did during Covid because I received a scholarship and didn't have to pay fees. I have production, editing and journalism skills of course, and while they might be 'transferable', i feel like the underlying issue is actually that I'm burnt out working in the media industry generally, and the demands that tech companies have placed on it meaning that even corporate work largely involves producing low-grade slop for people to scroll over on tiktok.

A part of me also wonders whether thinking about this as a 'career change' is particularly helpful. A year ago, I started working on creative projects just for me. I started writing a novel which I often think about returning to, and when I can, i paint and draw. I had been thinking about starting a newsletter of some kind, although I haven't on the basis of not wanting to contribute to the production of more online slop and nonsense, which suggested to me that there's still a desire to write and create, just that I don't really know how to do it in a non-commercial setting. Also, having a child and a mortgage to pay does mean that to an extent, any shift I do in my life does need to lead to some end where I a getting paid, or could monetise it.

THe result of the above is that im really just stagnated. On the days my kid goes to pre-school, I finish my work relatively quickly and find myself spending the rest of the day watching youtube videos or doomscrolling on social media, and when my wife and I go out with friends, I find myself embarassed talking about the work (or lack of) that I do. I also think this state of stagnation has impacted my relationship with my wife – when we met, I was very ambitious and hungry and my career trajectory was on the rise as I had just been promoted to the senior producer job, and had a couple of awards under my belt. It feels like since we got married, she's seen my career stumble and fall and there are things she says that makes it seem like she does see me as a bit of a bum or a layabout without a purpose (Since im home more I do take on the majority of the housework, cooking, childcare etc). And this of course has impacted our sex life too.

I [35M] have been married for 5 years [33F] and we dated 2 years before.

When we first got married and moved in together, I admit that I was pretty tardy when it came to doing my share in the house. I wasn't a 'bad' husband in that I did cook all our meals, do the laundry, take out the trash etc. It led to a lot of arguments, and took a big hit on our intimate life as my wife rightfully got angry that in some cases, I was giving her more work to do, or neglecting following through on jobs and tasks I said I would, or putting important things off.

3 years ago, when our first child was born and these arguments reached fever pitch (in that she was contemplating separation), I made a concerted effort to understand why these arguments were taking place, and in particular, what my wife meant by mental load. I read the main texts (Eve Rodksy, Leah Ruppanner, Morgan Cutlip), and over time, began developing systems to keep better track of my taks, jobs and responsibilities. I have ADHD, which makes a lot of this both revelatory (eg. Rodksy's book actively lists household and relationship tasks, which makes more sense to me as its visually laid out) and in some ways more difficult. Nevertheless, I made a lot of changes to try and solve the mental load problem – I created a big spreadsheet to list and track tasks, checklists on clipboards for each room of our house to ensure things are always clean and tidy, have twice weekly update meetings with my wife to keep on top of administrative work and to-do lists, and crucially, reduced my office hours to mostly work from home, so that I can handle taking our son to and from pre-school on days he goes, and parent him full time 2 days a week. I do all of the cooking, most of the laundry, take the lead on admin, and also plan out weekends.

Just over 2 Years ago, when I started this, my hope was to make my wife feel like she didn't have to think so much, that she didn't have to take on this entire invisible load that had been the bane of our marriage for some time. And I also hoped to show that I wasn't all talk about fixing things. THat I had implemented physical, visible systems to *show* her that I was serious about our marriage, our household and our kid.

A week ago, I sat down with my journal to reflect on the 2 years I had been working on this, and realised that I didn't think our marriage had really gotten to a better place. Arguments still happen just as frequently, only now they're about *how* I do certain things (not putting dishes in the dishwasher the way she would have done, not hanging laundry outside in the proper way), while her mental load still exists, but now encompasses different things that I'm apparently not paying attention to (for example, a recent argument was about how much dust was in our house and how she was the only person paying attention to the dust). She also believes the house is still just as cluttered, in part because I moved a some of my essential work tech from my office to home, in order to work from home more, and that this clutter (my computer set up, drawing tablet reference books) makes her feel stressed when she returns from work and that there's too much of my stuff in the house. There are times when she gets annoyed that while dinner was made at home, I didn't have time to clean up before she got back, and that while she knows I will clean it, the actual mental load is her seeing the mess and *thinking* that I've left it for her.

I've been in a dead bedroom for the past two years, and I want to emphasise that this is for basically all forms of intimacy. Beyond hugs and the occasional peck or two, there has been no intimacy in the relationship, something that my wife attributes to stress and the mental load making her not feel relaxed enough to want to try. I haven't pressured her, and I've stopped initiating after 6 months of rejection left me feeling humiliated.

I do know that my wife watches a lot of reels and a few months ago, and she watches videos made by people who make content mocking their husbands for how useless they are, or heavily suggesting that they should have never gotten married or have kids. I did see that she was favoriting posts with infographics along the lines of "My husband is a good man but I want to leave him" or "When you don't want to leave your husband but you also don't want to stay". I've brought this up in a round-about way a few times, and my wife has been forthright in saying that she still hasn't really gotten over the first few years of our relationship, and that the anger is still there and she doesn't really know when or if it will ever go away. Im glad she was honest with me, but it did make me wonder – what is the point of all of this? What's the point of continuing to try?

I'm trying not to be resentful or angry or revert back to how I used to be. It's taken a long time, a lot of therapy and a lot of force to get myself to where I am today, and I am proud of myself for becoming or organised or systemised than I ever thought I could be. But in the back of my head, I don't know whether this has actually made my marriage worse. Even when I was barely doing any housework and leaving dishes in the sink for days, I was having way more sex, and the relationship felt much more fun and like an actual relationship. It seems a lot better than a marriage that functions primarily off checkboxes, calendars and systems, but where I'm still getting yelled at.

Tl;Dr: Spent two years changing my life to fix my wife's 'mental load' problem, only to end up having the same number of arguments and even less intimacy.

I was hesitant to post this for a while, but having spoken to a few married friends of mine recently, i noticed a similar problem – namely, that our partners (women, in cis, hetero marriages and relationships) are consuming a lot of lifestyle content on tiktok and instagram that I'd broadly describe as 'marriage advice' influencers, who focus a lot on 'mental load' and the ways it makes relationships harder/worse for women.

Now, I want to caveat for a minute: I do believe the mental load is real, and when my wife gave birth to my kid a couple of years ago, I made a very conscious effort to learn about the ML and execute strategies to reduce it for her. It's been a bit of an uphill battle (I have ADHD which is part of the issue, and I also work a FT job and run a business, which takes up a lot of energy). In the last year, however, I felt like we were in a good place with it: I do all of the cooking, most of the cleaning, adjusted my work schedule so I am the primary parent every evening and 3 days a week, and also take some of the lead in planning meals, outings and other bits of admin such as car insurance or mortgage payments. I also do the laundry and load/unload the dishwasher, which I do while simultaneously parenting as my kid wakes up quite early in the morning. Our household runs off 4 daily lists hung up on clipboards, and are at least 80% checked off before the end of the day.

Now, the issue is that this still hasn't really resulted in any significant change since implementation. My wife and I still get into arguments about how she still carries the mental load, and she sends me videos throughout the day talking about how the invisible labour of mothers being about anticipation and logistics and how this adds more stress. In one argument, she said that I was just "executing tasks" and that while I might have thought i was helping, I was just following a sequence and not noticing extra stuff that needed to be done (without being specific about what that entailed). My theory is that she's learning a lot of this stuff from what her instagram algorithm is showing her. Having watched a few videos from creators she follows, the impression I get is that a lot of these creators speak very vaguely about their marriages and relationships, for example, they'll talk about how their husbands "never showed up for them" without getting specific about what that meant, or that their husbands "were there but not present, so I had to take on the mental load in sorting out meals for the week" which, again, can be very open to interpretation.

Whenever Ive asked my wife to be more specific in terms of what else she needs from me, she'll get annoyed, because, like other husbands of these influencers, I was apparently "asking for a list" which is a classic example of men putting labour onto women without compensation (?), but also gets agitated when i take the initative to sort things out myself (eg. a few weeks ago, i bought new jars and containers to organise our pantry, and she got angry because i threw out 'perfectly good tupperware and containers and that I should have asked before making the decision).

To me, it feels like the way 'mental load' is described to people by these influencers is deeply cynical, vague and designed in a way where a 50/50 split can't ever really be achieved, because you cant actually measure invisible labour, and you also can't measure anything that you won't adequately define. I can't speak for other partners and what they do or don't do, but I do think i'm playing a game where I'm constantly losing, but these influencers have such a hold on my wife and her friends, who feel seen and understood by them in a way that I don't seem to be able to do.

Wondered if anyone had experiences with this?

tl;dr : Wife watches a lot of marriage influencers who talk about the burdens of the mental load, and, imo, is unfairly projecting this frustration onto me.