Help me have a better relationshipwith my wife.

Long time lurker, first post on Reddit ever.

I’m having some issues in my marriage and I’m hoping the Reddit hive mind can help me out. FYI: Long read.

Edit: Thanks for the advice. I already bought, “No more Mr Nice guy!” and it will be at my house in 2 days. 😁

Background:

My wife and I have been married for 23 years. We started dating 26 years ago when she was 19 and I was 22. We got married young when she was 22 and I was 25.

Now we are older and have a lot of children. 21 F, 19 M, (Out of the house.) 16 M, 13 F, 10 M & 6 F (At home with us). My gorgeous wife is a SAHM (Stay at home mom) and she homeschools the children as well. I have been a police officer for 20 years, and work regular overtime, so our lives are busy.

We are both devout Christians and very active in our church. We having a never say divorce policy and endeavor to love eachother unconditionally.

I’m like Ted Mosby from how I met your mother. I knew I loved her on our first date, and I was a lost cause thereafter. I’ve always been romantic and a lover. I loved bombed her with words of affection and physical touch. ( My love languages) and she wanted nothing but to be around me and to do things for me. (Her love languages).

She’s a great wife, and mother to our kids and foster child. She is super sweet, nurturing, beautiful, and does many little acts of kindness to show us how much she loves us all.

I try to date my wife and regularly ask her to go out with me, but she would rather stay home. We love each other a lot and spend our nights together 3 to 4 days a week cuddling and watching TV and movies. (What she likes) and we cuddle up which feeds my need for touch.

But I have felt her sexual desire for me ebb and flow over the years. (Totally normal especially with kids, life, etc) Especially lately, as she entered premenopause.

Now we are lucky to have sex three to four times a month, and there have been months where we had sex once or twice. When I brought up the lack of affection, sex, and touch, I was scolded as only caring about sex, and not seeing her acts of affection toward me.

When we have sex its great. We are very attentive to eachothers needs. I always get her off anywhere from 1 to 4 times, then it’s my turn. Ladies first, after all. 😉

So I started some introspection, and reading. I learned that my attachment style was anxious. ( Due to a very messed up early family life.) Which explained my emotional monitoring (which drove her nuts) and my love bombing.

I believe that I’m the adorer in our relationship, and that I smother her with my affection. I send her poetry, romantic posts, constantly tell her how great she is etc. I’m very physically affectionate with her, but get little response in return.

I think I have put her on a pedestal and made her my everything to the detriment of our relationship. I realized that I really just want to be adored, and sought after by her, but my love bombing, and placing her on a pedestal has made that impossible for her to do.

My question is this. How do I reverse this? How can I make her desire me more? How do I change the dynamic of our relationship, so that I become the adored?

God bless you if you have made it this far.