Lots of solid advice already but here is a bit of my own from my wife and my experiences.
My first piece would be if you want this to work, divorce needs to be fully taken off the table as an option, both in your mind and in the conversation. This is important for two reasons:
- First, for a marriage to truly thrive both people have to be able to be completely vulnerable and honest with each other. For this type of vulnerability to happen, there has to be an assumed/understood security in the relationship. This security gets shattered when divorce enters as an option, because the relationship is no longer a lifelong commitment but a regular relationship that could come to an end at any time. This can effect the level of communication but also physical intimacy. I know personally, my wife would completely shut down physically if there was a thought that divorce was a possibility, just because she would lose the security that commitment brings. So if divorce has entered the conversation, I would suggest sitting down with your wife and formally and unequivocally taking it off the table.
- Second, it will help you mentally to persevere in making your marriage work. Our brains are a funny thing, and are willing to push through quite a bit more muck when we know there is no other option. It the same reason that when I go for a long run, I prefer out and back to loops. If I'm running laps, I have multiple chances to give up on my run if an exit happens to coincide with a weak moment in my will power. If I go out and back, I know I have to finish and so the ebb and flow of my will power smooths out because my brain isn't even considering quitting, because it knows I can't, I have to finish. So convincing yourself that this is till death will make you much stronger and more effective in pursuing a solid marriage.
Physical Affection:
Here I am going to partly agree with with Retired but be a bit more broad and include all physical affection since you did. Here differences in levels of physical interest can be a large stress on a relationship, and there will likely always be some level of difference between you and your wife. But being willing to tear apart a marriage over this is a severe overreaction. I do disagree to a point with Retired though, because I do think that if both parties are physically able, sex is an important part of a healthy marriage. She is not there solely for sexual gratification, but especially if one of your "love languages" is physical touch, not having it can be a huge drain on a marriage. (Paul even says not to deprive each other sexually in 1 Corinthians 7). But you also have to learn to be ok with different levels of physical desire. If you are anything like me, you will basically have two thresholds. 1)The amount of physical intimacy you want (which will likely be unsustainable outside of a honeymoon type vacation) and 2)the amount you need in order to maintain a feeling of closeness with your spouse. If that's the case, figure out where your thresholds are and have that conversation. My wife and i recognized that when our second child arrives it will likely be difficult to consciously maintain adequate intimacy for both of us, so we basically set a threshold and agreed, if we ever get to x number of days, it doesn't matter if neither of us are in the mood, we are doing it, which sounds terrible, but takes some of the pressure off because neither ever has to wonder, "is this ever going to happen again", and also it's just for a season. Also in this, remember sex is not just a need/desire for you. Paul also says for husbands to not deprive their wives sexually. And this is a place I think particularly in the church people get things wrong, teaching that sex is essentially just for the man. But its not so don't treat it like something just for you. After saying all this though, I would recommend not pushing to hard on remedying the physical side of things, until you have re-established some trust and intimacy on the other fronts, otherwise this will likely not go well. It may not be fair, but this one has to take backseat.
Helping out:
Two things here (hopefully not a novel but we will see). First, along the lines of the "love languages" and what Retired said, it may be that you are not helping where she needs/wants help. I know this was an issue for me and i have just started daily asking my wife when i get home (she stays at home with kiddo) "how can i be the most help to you right now?" its silly but it makes sure my efforts are being best spent, it also communicates to her that i care about being helpful. On her side though, the expectation can't be there that i will just know what the priority should be. People see and process the world differently and so an expectation to be on the same page without communicating what that page is, is unrealistic and doomed to failure, and i think if that is a struggle, that is a conversation you can GENTLY have with her. Second, it may help to change of the mindset of you are not helping her, the two of you are a team working together. This may not be the case, but the mindset of helping her could be portraying that all of the work is her responsibility and you are just "helping out" and especially if you both work this could be a big deal.
Counseling:
Don't give up on this just because of one bad experience. Finding the right counselor can be huge, but you will likely have to sift through several bad ones first. Because just because someone else loves them, doesn't make them the right fit for you. Last year my wife an I were having an issue we just couldn't work through after a year of trying and so we finally sought help. It took us a few tries to find a counselor that was a good fit for both of us, but once we did, it was like flipping a switch on the issue. Literally two sessions and we had figured out why we were at such an impasse. The other piece of this (and this is pure speculation now), is especially if your kids are still young, there is a chance your wife is struggling with some form/level of postpartum depression or anxiety. My wife was hit pretty hard with late onset postpartum anxiety at about 10 months and it really opened my eyes to this. It is something widely overlooked but very real. It took a massive episode for both of us to realize it was there, but once we started digging (with a counselor that was a good fit for her) we realized how long it had actually been there just at a simmer level. It helped us to see that a lot of our stress had been stemming from this underlying anxiety that hadn't been dealt with, and depending on the age of your kids this could be hard to diagnose because in the medical world "postpartum" stops after 12 months, even though this issue can linger for years. Now that we have been through this and learned to recognize it, looking around, i would wager 60-70% of women i interact with who have kids under 5 struggle with this on one level or another. And this is another area that counseling can be a huge help, both in diagnosing, and in dealing with it. But something like that sitting under the surface can undermine all your best efforts to strengthen your marriage.
My last piece of advice is try to find an older couple that you respect who have been married a long time and get them involved in your life. It is hard to overstate the benefit of having someone in your life who has "been there, done that" who can help encourage and advise your through. Because when you get down to it, no problem you can experience is new, anything you go through someone has made it through before you, and likely most (not all) of the issues you will face in your marriage will end up being pretty common to most marriages that made it 30-40-50 years. And the other takeaway from that, is if you both work through this, this is absolutely something you can work through and is not the end unless you let it be. Hopefully all my pre-coffee morning ramblings here made sense and are worth at least slightly more than you paid for them.
