Hi Adam --

What you said about wanting more demonstrative affection and so on - my husband felt the same way, so he told me he wanted it, and so I learned to express myself a little differently to give him joy. I presume married people ideally want to please each other; it's a part of the mix.

I will not judge your wife or say what she should do or if she needs a counsellor or what have you -- but I can sure understand you feel it is not a very equal situation. You're being very responsible and she's not. When my husband was briefly like that, I said we can't live like this. This is not being adult. This is not appropriate. I want to feel we are equal. Sure not the same, and better at different things, but equal. Maybe you want the same thing. But it sounds like you sure need some real communication with your wife and time for problem solving. I feel sad that you had to air this with all of us on this board, rather than her taking the time to take this stuff seriously. Maybe equality is what you want, or maybe there are some other values in priority, but shared or differing values are very important for spouses to discuss.

Since she is such a great cook, I bet she could get a cooking job without a lot of difficulty. Something to keep her going until she feels more confident for something ambitious.

I hope you both can resolve these problems in your shared situation! It sounds tough.

And the initial thing you asked about, well, you are just seeing the qualities your wife is lacking - and she's not even trying to improve. If you don't try in this world, you get nothing. But there is no shame in feeling attraction to attractive people, imo.