Dear Prudence,
My wife is an amazing woman. Amazing mother (couldn’t and wouldn’t ask for more).
A great provider (working a shitty job now so we can live more comfortably). A great wife (loyal, honest, and a team player). My best friend (period, no doubts, no regrets, my best friend for the rest of my life). The one aspect that falls short in my perception is our love life.
I was transferring files from our old computer to the new one recently and ran across old pictures of her and her high school/college boyfriends (some of them racy). I got jealous. Not because she had sexual relationships with them or loved them. I got jealous because it shows an amount of effort that I feel is missing, particularly in our intimate life. She put on makeup, put on an outfit, took pictures, sexually experimented with them, initiated sex, and had foreplay with them, and I’m sure other things that pushed her outside her comfort zone in order to impress/show that she cared/desired/wanted them.
In my mind, as her husband I thought I would get, at the very least, an equal amount of effort, and because I do not I think myself lesser than these previous partners in her eyes—less desirable, less cared for, less loved, less wanted. It depresses me. I have asked, nagged, pleaded, begged, bribed, and guilted her into doing a fraction of that, and my own self-worth falls because of it. I see the only way to get her to do those things is if she just wants to shut me up.
I know she puts forth so much effort on all the other fronts of her life in order to make a great life for her kids/family that it physically and emotionally exhausts her. Can I ask for more without being selfish?
— B+ for Effort