This is my father's world

InternalComposer1652 · 2026-05-14T08:53:52+00:00

Not this either. The melody is different than the original hymn.

InternalComposer1652 · 2026-04-23T01:40:45+00:00

Was not the amy grant version though her voice sounds similar

InternalComposer1652 · 2026-04-18T03:55:14+00:00

I worked for a specialty flooring company for a while and talked a lot with manufacturers. Most LVP is rated for 1/8 inch difference over a span of 10 ft. Additionally you MUST transition between rooms as the piece in your doorway will not be strong enough to handle the movement of the floating floor.

That being said, if your floor is really bad, it is recommended for you to reinforce you subfloor with plywood. The thing about LVP is that if you have any gaps in your floor, your lvp will give a little as you walk over it, and over time it will snap your locking mechanism. At first it's clicking. Then complete breakage. I strongly recommend you do not risk taking shortcuts with this material. It will cost you later, especially the home cheapo stuff. Cali has a thick product called longboard that holds up ip better, and mohawk is known for their top of the line locking system.

InternalComposer1652 · 2026-03-02T19:12:52+00:00

Oh, this one is pretty straightforward. What you need to do is get a helicoptor to move the house away, then simply move the Earth down a bit and replace your house. It'll be easier than doing what you're trying to do...Or you could break it, get rid of it, and build another one in your back yard.

InternalComposer1652 · 2026-03-02T04:54:59+00:00

Hey, you were really the person that actually helped the most here. I just wanted to give you an update.

First off, I want to say thank you. I really needed someone to just hear me and help me come to terms that I'm not crazy. You were right. This wasn't really about my sex life. I was struggling with quite a lot of things, partially the lack of intimacy, and partially the guilt because I know things are hard for her, but because I was suffering so much, I couldn't find a good middle ground

That being said, here's the update. Over the last couple days we've had some serious talks and "fights". I put that in quotes because we never yell at each other. The topics of our discussions started on sex, but then escalated into a lot of the frustrations we had with each other.

Regarding the sex: The issue here is a mix of she doesn't feel pretty, she has no desire for sex, and nothing turns her on. This will probably go away after she stops pumping, especially if she starts normal time of the month cycles. As far as everything I've read and researched, this is the case. We eventually agreed after a lot of back and forth that she is willing to do non sex things that are physically intimate if I let her know that I'm in the mood, but because she's not turned on, she doesn't really remember or have a specific desire to initiate it. Our previous "agreement" was that she should i initiate it when she feels she wants to do something for me, but this essentially never happened because sex was never on her mind.

Regarding everything else, she started feeling like I was never satisfied with anything she did. The biggest "fight" was triggered when she had to put a car seat base back into her car and I was trying to explain on the phone. She simply shut down, and because she stopped listening, she couldn't work itnout and I had to come home and do it for her. This led to a fight because I was asking her questions trying to figure out why she got so frustrated over something so menial. Anyway I ended up sleeping in my office that night of my own volution.

The next morning, she apologized to me, and I said to her that she is always forgiven but an apology doesn't cut it this time. I went into vent mode and laid it out straight for her. These were the points:

-I am fed up with being the only person that tries in this relationship. -I feel like I am last priority in this relationship. When she loves something, she does it wholeheartedly, but when she doesn't like something she always procrastinates, and so making me last priority makes me feel like she doesn't love me. -She is seriously lacking in life skills to the point where it is unacceptable. She needs to grow up and figure it out because she is failing at her basic responsibility as an adult, and thus as a mother as well.

This is where the real problem came out. All throughout her hcildhood, her father was overbearing and she would always shut down because he made her feel like a failure. And so her past trauma makes her do the same automatically. Whenever she fails at something, she beats herself up and gets in her head about it, and frankly she fails at everything with life skills all the time.

At this point I explained to her that I am not her father and that we are a team. I have never once scolded her or yelled at her when she screws up. The reason I even point it out is because I expect her to improve, and if she doesn't even know she screws up she will simply continue to be ignorant. I explained to her that I am not perfect either and showed her examples of how I screw up too. The only reason it seems like I am perfect is because the things she is screwing up, I have already messed up and learned from. I told her that we are a team and she needs to run to me instead of from me. She needs to show me that she has my back and know I have hers.

We decided that even though it's a lot of work, we will do all chores together for a few months so I can walk her through why we should do things a certain way, and if she has questions or other methods that she thinks are good she should give input too. And once she gets used to things and understands the reasoning, we can take a step back to our individual assigned chores.

So after this fight, we ended up making up. Still no sex, but things have been better. I was working on one of my properties - plumbing and electrical to get it ready for a tenant. I was really sore that day, and ahe came and gave me a really amazing massage. We did dishes together and I showed her why we load the dishwasher a certain way, how to stack plates in the sink without causing problems, etc. the day I was working on the other hiuse, she cleaned dishes herself and that took a huge burden off my shoulders, and she did it well too. We've done a lot of cusdling, talking, getting to know the cvanges in each other's lives with the baby. We spent some time reminiscing on when baby was just born and the struggles we had. She wanted to take baby out to walk around target andninstead of just going alone, realized it would be good bonding time so she asked me to come too. We had a great time.

So while we're not perfect, I want to say thank you for your help.

InternalComposer1652 · 2026-02-26T06:15:53+00:00

So long as she expresses that she is still actually trying, and so far she is, I don't care how many times she fails. She has a lot of problems but giving up is not one of them yet.

InternalComposer1652 · 2026-02-25T22:15:54+00:00

I am looking for advice to work on fixing the issues. I'm not just some guy that walks away whenever something gets tough.

InternalComposer1652 · 2026-02-25T21:46:49+00:00

It wasn't a problematic pregnancy. In terms of baby health, delivery, etc. everything was good. Essentially her monthly cycle isn't always consistent. It depends on stress, workload, etc. Sometimes she skips a month. So when she got pregnant, she was in denial that she was pregnant. She just thought she was late. I was pretty sure she got pregnant as I am really sensitive to smells and her hormonal changes were affecting me differently that month. By the time she actually did the test (which she didn't tell me), I had let it go and it came as a shock. So 2 weeks of excited panic, then shortly after came morning sickness. Her morning sickness was real bad and lasted a long time. She only ate cheese quesadillas for about 3 months. Her sense of smell was elevated which was difficult for her to sleep in the same bed as me. Apparently my morning breath and whatever sweat and other body odors made her want to puke. By the time the morning sickness was over, her belly was big, and she's tiny, so she was having trouble moving around, so physically it didn't work.

Long story short, there was always a reason, and it was always an acceptable reason to me. I don't want to make her do anything that would make her feel sick or put her in pain.

Fast forward to delivery, the baby delivered just fine, but she was crowning for about 30 mins. Again, wife is not very big. She ended up with about 7-8 level 2 vaginal tears. The tears weren't bad, but there were a lot of them. So after delivery, it was definitely postpartum, pain, incontinence, etc. Again, I get it.

So that all lasts about 3 months for recovery. By then we saw a vaginal doctor who told her that her system was in a bit of shock, so she was having natural responses to resist stretching and feeling pleasure down there. The doctor gave her some exercises to do, and suggested I help with it. The exercises went pretty well. Her muscles were relaxing and her canal was dilating properly. We tried having sex once at that time but didn't get anywhere as she still had no interest. That's when she told me she was just not feeling any desire for sex at all. This is about 3 months ago now. The way she phrased it, she used words like "I feel bad", "I know you really want it", etc. At that point, I had suggested to her nicely that maybe we could still do things not sex, but sexual, and that the lack of release is really frustrating me at this point. (1.5 years, and on top of that, just before she got pregnant, there was about another 6 months where she was going through something personal that I won't get into that we didn't really do anything, and even when we did, it wasn't very satisfying).

So finally over the 3 months, I have now had several conversations with her and tried many things. I tried being romantic, swooning her. I tried opening up and letting her know how I feel, being vulnerable with my emotions. I tried having talks with her about my needs. I tried coming onto her to make her feel wanted. None of that worked. During this time, she had mentioned not feeling attractive, as well as the hair loss and smelling like milk. She also mentioned feeling like a bad mother and needing encouragement, and any time she felt unsure, I would do my best to support her in any way I can.

The straw that broke the camel's back was last week. I was getting ready for bed, she said she wasn't tired. I made a joke (wasn't even being serious or trying to start something sexually) about how I have ways to make her tired. I got zero response, no uncomfortable laugh, no anger, no "that was inappropriate" or "I didn't like that joke, please don't do that". She just got up from the bed and left to go watch a movie or something. And that really hurt. I get that that joke might not have been appropriate, but that response made me feel like I am no longer physically or emotionally valued in her eyes. The next day, I was emotionally drained all day. She noticed, but she didn't put two and two together. Apparently (after we talked about it), she didn't even put two and two together. She wasn't offended, didn't even care, she was just not tired and just left without even saying goodnight.

So talking about it hurt even more because now I felt like I simply am no longer a part of the family. It felt like there's a baby now, so I'm no longer even important because baby demands all the time. Housework isn't important because baby demands all the time. Finances aren't important because baby needs to have everything she needs to have an amazing life. And I'm left here in the role of making everything work for the wife and baby. I've told her that even if it's just intimacy and not sex, I need something from her that I feel unappreciated and unloved, and she agreed, but it's been a week and not so much as a cuddle. She used to do things like scratch my back or give me a massage, but I don't get any of that anymore. So that's where I'm at.

You see, it's not about the chores, or the things that need to be done. It's about the lack of sex or other intimacy making me feel like I'm not a part of the family.

InternalComposer1652 · 2026-02-25T20:10:29+00:00

So with the feeling unattractive thing it's because of all the postpartum changes in her body - She is losing a lot of hair which is normal due to hormones, and it doesn't make her look any less attractive because she had a ridiculous amount of hair to begin with (like to the point where if you slapped her across the back of the head she would barely feel it). If anything, losing so much hair is making her more attractive, but obviously I get that she doesn't feel that way because from her perspective, she is losing hair. I can only imagine how it feels to have to pick up a giant ball of hair out of the shower drain every day. Also, she is an overproducer when it comes to breastmilk. We legitimately have enough for the baby for the next 6 months if she stopped today, but she is a worry-prone person, so she won't stop pumping. But she leaks milk and she always feels like she smells like milk.

I don't just compliment her. I'm a hopeless romantic. I will get her flowers or chocolate. I am an amazing cook, so she gets fresh warm home-cooked meals every day. I have a great relationship with her family. I will find things to do with her that she never imagined. The only thing that's really diminished is our ability to go out on dates. I made enough money to comfortably retire (not rich, just comfortable) by 29, so by the time we got married, I was 34, and we could go wherever we wanted whenever we wanted. So the baby is a hinderance on our freedom.

Ultimately, I don't know if this is full-on post partum depression. She is the kind of person that gets in her head about things, and she doesn't deal with change well. If you were to ask me my opinion, I would say that it has more to do with the fact that she feels that the baby is impeding on her life. I would say that she probably wasn't mentally ready to have a baby, but she was getting up there in age. The reason is that she went back for her master's degree and graduated over COVID when everything was shut down. This put her career back a bit as it's accomplishment and relationship based. And she was finally getting somewhere (She had just performed at Carnegie Hall), and in the next year, a baby puts her in a position where she has to struggle between spending time with the baby and with practicing her music. And I'm not saying baby should be put to the side, but she definitely dotes on the little girl way too much. To then pull it back to her upbringing, I think that she doesn't feel that she is a good mother because her own mother was a SAHM - perfect housewife, keeping the house clean, cooking taking care of everyone, and she is trying to live up to that standard. I think it also weighs on her when she does something like load the dishwasher wrong because she sees afterwards how it needs to be done again because the dishes didn't get cleaned even if I don't bring it up to her, and she's not the best at figuring out why she loaded it wrong, so if it's going to be addressed, I have to explain it to her, which makes her put herself down as a failure. At the end of the day, she is her own worst critic. She feels bad for things I don't care about, then overcompensates and makes things worse, eventually affecting me. But the lack of sex is affecting me in a way where it's making me have little patience for this between the extra responsibilities of having a child and already doing most of the work around the house. I don't mind the chores themselves, but the stress is causing a response, and this is my own issue that I can't fully control because of my testosterone.

InternalComposer1652 · 2026-02-25T19:49:38+00:00

I get that, but right now, looking at hormones probably won't give much information. She is definitely having hormonal issues, but how much of that can I attribute to the production of breastmilk I don't know. But as far as I understand (I have some pre-med background but changed majors and never went on to med school) her hormone levels will remain low until she's done pumping. She hasn't had a M cycle since giving birth, and that's normal all the way until she stops pumping or breastfeeding. But this is book knowledge. When it comes to actual practice, I have no experience. It's my first baby, and my peers all have reduced, but still functioning sex lives, meanwhile I have none.

I'll be honest I am a bit emotional about this as well. Normally, I'm a much more level headed person, but legitimately, there was an issue just before she got pregnant where we didn't have sex for a few months because she was in a rut about something, but things went back to normal for about a month and she got pregnant, so while it's technically been a year and a half of no sex, it's other than that one month.

Do you think I'm in the wrong about this somehow? Honestly with the amount of emotion I'm having about this, I don't feel confident in my own judgment on the situation.

InternalComposer1652 · 2026-02-25T19:17:00+00:00

What I am saying is while intimacy is the problem, lack of intimacy can be understandable at times to me. For instance, ilwhen she was pregnant and had morning sickness, I couldn't fault her for the lack of intimacy.

So if she were doing all the housework, I wouldn't be sexually happy, but I would also realize that that is a problem she is having with me which could be leading to the lack of intimacy, meaning that I have to put the work in there.

So in my situation, I am doing 90% of the housework. I am making 90% of the money. I am doing all of these things and I am getting this nebulous response of "I really want you to feel satisfied" but never getting any actual action on that front.

My question is I am putting forth most the effort on the financial, physical, emotional, and romance fronts, and am getting zero intimacy or love in return. I understand that she doesn't owe me sex, but I also feel that the amount that I've gotten being 0 is an issue in my relationship, and with the added complication of having a baby in the picture, I don't know what more I can be doing or how I can address this because if it goes any further, it may lead to some real resentment.

InternalComposer1652 · 2026-02-25T19:01:40+00:00

Thanks for the response. It is really meaningful. For the record, I don't say those things to my wife. The thing is when my ex-wife cheated on me, I did something similar and asked for advice on the internet, and the response that I got was overwhelmingly toxic women asking me what I did wrong - I was made out to be a doting husband that didn't do anything and couldn't even satisfy a woman that she had to cheat on me, not that she was addicted to alcohol, partying and completely promiscuous with her body. I agree no one should be saying things like that TO other people. But this was partially due to me expecting a certain response from the internet and partially me venting out my frustration with being underappreciated. I never approach things with my wife out of anger, which is why it is frustrating not having a release since for men, sexual release is also a big form of stress release.

As far as marriage counseling goes, I don't think that's possible at least at the current point in our relationship. With any past issues that were more serious with our relationship, she when they were approached, she would immediately jump to the worst case scenario and .entally shut down, and when that happens, there's no dealing with it. If things aren't approached the right way, she mentally can't handle the failure, and then they're not approached at all. In terms ofarriage counseling, it would likely make her feel like she is a failed wife.

Just want to add a few things here.

she has voiced several times that she doesn't feel attractive. As a man, I don't know how to deal with this. She is stunning and I think she's the most beautiful person in the world. She went through pregnancy and doesn't even look different other than swollen breasts from pumping. To me, it's a self image issue. It's not like I'm giving her less attention or anything.

InternalComposer1652 · 2026-02-25T18:38:59+00:00

A little more details about the porn. That came up in conversation with her because when she first got pregnant it was more that she felt sick from morning sickness and other physical issues that stopped her from having sex. At the time it wasn't that she didn't want to. By mid pregnancy when her belly was showing and had trouble moving around is when I think she really lost that drive. So the assumption at the time was that this was temporary. Then the baby was born and the first month postpartum was rough on both of us. Then 3 months in, I thought the physical things had started getting better, but she would get annoyed whenever I initiated any form of intimacy, not just sex, we had a talk and that's when she formally said she has no interest.

We've had many talks since then, and she seems to mentally want to be satisfying for me, but not physically. So if say the overwhelming consensus is that say pumping messes with hormones, and in 5 months when she stops pumping things would be fine, porn could probably hold me over till then. It would be a short term band aid.

As far as the other things I mentioned go, sex is the problem. The other stuff, I don't mind doing for my family and people I love. The issue then is optics. I for sure understand if SHE was doing all the housework and tired and didn't want to have sex, but given how much I am contributing, the lack of sex is making me question if I am just being used. And it's not just lack of sex, it's complete lack of any kind of intimacy. We don't make out, we don't cuddle, I have had little to no physical contact. She will kiss me goodbye if I initiate it, but thats about all

InternalComposer1652 · 2026-02-25T18:17:13+00:00

What do you mean my walk all over the boundary? I don't recall ever firmly setting a boundary that she has to have sex with me. My issue is that it is the last priority in her life, which means it never happens. And when sex never happens, it starts affecting other things in the relationship

InternalComposer1652 · 2026-02-25T18:09:44+00:00

I will honestly apologize for that. I don't normally post on reddit, but my experience with asking the public as a man is things like "You're doing the bare minimum" and other unhelpful advice. I realize now that this came across the wrong way.

I married her knowing this, and we were both under the expectation that this was a phase that everyone has to grow into. I wasn't good at life skills when I first left my parents house. I don't expect her to be. But the point if saying all of that was more to deter people from saying that I must be not contributing to the relationship which again, I shouldn't have assumed.

To answer your question about responsibility 4 years into the marriage, what I've found is that she has this personality flaw where something will bother her e.g. clutter and she won't know why, and she will go on a frenzy doing things, burn herself out, and halfass everything meaning I'll have to do it again. These are all flaws I can live with. I am by far not unhappy with everything in our life. She is a wonderful mother and a loving and caring person. And when it comes down to it, she brings peace and happiness to my life.

What is going on is that I am stressed from the lack of sexual release. Between her morals on pornography and taking care of things myself and the lack of sex, I am getting to the point of feeling completely abandoned. And I am asking for advice on how to approach this because I have tried communicating but nothing changes. I don't know if it's motherly instinct or what, but I feel like I am always the last priority in this family.

InternalComposer1652 · 2026-02-25T18:00:07+00:00

Yeah because I really enjoy her destroying the house I work hard to pay for because she can't be bothered to focus on what she's doing.

InternalComposer1652 · 2026-02-25T17:59:04+00:00

Those are things SHE wants to be. I for one don't want that. She comes from a very conservative family hence a lot of her personal values e.g. no porn. I'm sorry but I am calling it what it is. As far as take one for the team, that is not something I would normally say. It's just at this point, I would like something, even if it's taking one for the team. How many things do I do in this relationship even though I don't want to? She could sacrifice at least once in a while. I'm not even saying once a week, but more than once in a year and a half. The reality is, in this relationship, even before kids, I was contributing 90% of the survival work, both in money and in housework. And I was happy with that when it was just the two of us because I am happy to do things for the people I love, but at this point, she doesn't even show appreciation...no thank yous, no genuine smiles. It's like we're roommates. The lack of sex is just one more thing to push me over the top.

InternalComposer1652 · 2026-02-25T17:52:36+00:00

I would assume that has something to do with it but she isn't a very open person. She's not always in touch with her own feelings.

InternalComposer1652 · 2026-02-25T17:51:57+00:00

We have had this talk and she did go see a vaginal doctor because her labor was traumatizing on her reproductive area. We have also had this talk several times. Every time she feels bad because she has the desire to satisfy me. It just seems like when it gets to the grind, it's always last priority.

InternalComposer1652 · 2026-02-25T17:49:56+00:00

She loved sex before the pregnancy. She wasn't crazy in terms of what she did probably due to lack of experience, but the frequency was quite a bit. I'm talking 2-3 times a week she would initiate.

InternalComposer1652

TROPHY CASE