My wife and I had been married for five years, and we had two young children together. Before becoming parents, our relationship had been very different. We spent more time together, went on dates, talked late into the night, and generally felt close to one another. After the children were born, however, our lives became much more demanding. Between work, parenting, household responsibilities, and exhaustion, our relationship gradually started changing.

One of the biggest changes was in our intimacy. Before having children, we had a healthy romantic relationship, but afterward, things never really returned to normal. Eventually, our intimate life became something that happened only about once a month. I understood that having young children could affect a marriage, and I didn’t expect everything to remain exactly as it had been before. Still, I missed feeling close to my wife and began wondering whether there was something deeper going on between us.

Around the same time, my wife became increasingly interested in romance novels. At first, I didn’t think anything of it. She had always enjoyed reading, and I was happy that she had something she could do to relax after taking care of the children. But eventually, reading became a major part of her daily routine. She would spend hours reading, sometimes staying up late with a book while I was in another room or already asleep. I started wondering whether the romantic stories she was reading were somehow affecting the way she viewed our relationship.

I eventually tried talking to her about how distant I felt. I wasn’t accusing her of doing anything wrong, and I didn’t want to tell her what she could or couldn’t read. My concern was that we seemed to have plenty of time for fictional romance but very little emotional connection in our real marriage. She told me that the books were simply an escape from the stress of everyday life and that reading them didn’t mean she loved me any less. That answer helped me understand her perspective, but it didn’t completely solve the problem I was experiencing.

The situation made me realize that our biggest issue probably wasn’t the romance novels themselves. We had become tired parents who had slowly stopped making our relationship a priority. We needed to communicate honestly about what each of us was missing instead of blaming a hobby or avoiding the subject. I wanted us to rebuild our emotional connection first, spend more intentional time together, and find ways to reconnect as partners rather than simply functioning as parents. The books might have been part of the situation, but our struggling marriage needed attention from both of us.

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My bedroom is mostly dead and but my wife’s romance/light smut obsession is roaring

35M here with 33F wife, married 5 years with two younger kids. Our sex life after kids never really bounced back and is basically once a month at this point.

My concern is, her obsession with romance novels is hurting our sex life and our marriage. She reads romance novels every chance she can get. Mafia arranged marriages, vampire romance, Christmas hookups, from mostly romance to pretty smutty. You name it, she reads it – and it’s all the time. At the dinner table, before bed, while the kids are watching tv and I’m cooking, etc.

First, I think she puts herself in those situations and gets a lot of her needs met through the books. I’ve heard a lot of people describe them as the equivalent of porn for women.

Second, she spends so much time reading them, we literally have nothing to talk about or add in daily conversation because she just says that she read “books” and she’s too embarrassed about the details. We regularly joke with people that if we didn’t have kids I’m not sure what we’d have in common anymore, since her days consist of work and reading and occasional reality tv. She’s on track to read well over 150 of them by end of year if she continues at this pace.

What really set me off the other night was after a couple rejections in a week, one afternoon while the kids were napping I found a razor that was hidden under a blanket in our room under her side of the bed. This thing vibrates like crazy and could 100% be used for masturbation. Her kindle was right next to it. I jokingly handed it to her and asked what’s up with this and she said she has no idea how it got there. Then she doubled down and said if she really wanted a toy she’d buy a real one. I didn’t want to press her because it just wasn’t worth it. I know it was a lie.

I honestly think I’ve lost her at this point. I’ve tried telling her my concerns and she just shuts it down that they’re just books and she knows they aren’t real.

Between my dead bedroom and the novels causing my wife to drift, I’m strongly considering asking her to go the therapy or if she refuses, divorce. I’m not going to live out some prime years with a partner obsessed with fictional men.

Is anyone else dealing with a similar issue, and/or do you have advice?

Common questions answered below:

Money, health, social life, etc are all not concerns. We both make good money, stay in shape, and have a healthy mutual social life and friends to ourselves as well. We have regular date nights, marriage goals, etc. Before it gets asked – I do my fair share and more. Dishes, lawn, kids drop/pick up, cleaning, finances, taking the kids for a full weekend day so she can take time to herself or with a friend – I’m not Superman and I’m not perfect but we’ve never had a discussion that I need to help out more. If anything, she’s mentioned that she feels like she’s not pulling her weight (she’s doing fine).

Our Marriage Changed After We Became Parents

My wife and I had been married for five years, and we had two young children together. Before we became parents, our relationship was very different. We spent a lot of time together, went out on dates, watched movies, talked late into the night, and generally felt very connected. We both knew that having children would change our routine, but neither of us expected our marriage to change as much as it eventually did.

After our first child was born, life became much more demanding. My wife was exhausted from taking care of the baby, while I was trying to balance work and everything that needed to be done at home. We were both constantly tired. At first, I thought things would eventually settle down once we adjusted to being parents.

Then our second child came along, and our responsibilities increased even more. Between childcare, work, household chores, bills, and trying to get enough sleep, our relationship gradually moved further down the list of priorities. We weren’t fighting constantly or treating each other badly. Instead, we simply became busy and emotionally distant.

Our romantic relationship suffered as well. Before having children, we had been much more affectionate and spontaneous with each other. After the kids arrived, those moments became less frequent. Eventually, our intimate life had dropped to roughly once a month.

I tried not to complain because I understood that raising young children could be exhausting. I didn’t want my wife to feel pressured or believe that I didn’t appreciate everything she did for our family. At the same time, I couldn’t deny that I missed the closeness we once had.

My wife also seemed to find an escape from our stressful routine through reading. She had always enjoyed books, but her interest in romance novels gradually became much stronger. What started as an occasional hobby eventually became something she spent a significant amount of her free time doing.

She would often read after the children went to bed. Sometimes she would sit on the couch with a book for hours, completely absorbed in the story. Other nights, she would stay awake reading while I went to bed because I had work the next morning.

At first, I honestly didn’t care. Everyone needs a hobby, and I was glad she had something that helped her relax. I didn’t think reading romance novels had anything to do with our marriage. I certainly didn’t want to criticize something that gave her a break from the stress of parenting.

But over time, I started noticing something that bothered me. My wife seemed to have plenty of emotional energy for fictional relationships while our own relationship was receiving very little attention. The characters in her books seemed to occupy a huge part of her thoughts, while conversations between the two of us increasingly revolved around children, chores, work, and bills.

I started wondering whether the stories she was reading were influencing her expectations about relationships. Romance novels often portray dramatic relationships, intense emotions, and people who constantly express their feelings. Real marriages, especially marriages with young children, aren’t always like that.

I knew fictional stories weren’t necessarily the problem, though. Millions of people enjoy romance novels without having problems in their marriages. So I tried not to make assumptions. Instead, I focused on what I was actually experiencing in our relationship.

I felt lonely. Even though my wife and I lived in the same house and were raising two children together, I sometimes felt more like her roommate or parenting partner than her husband. We communicated every day, but many of our conversations were about practical responsibilities rather than our feelings or relationship.

One evening, I finally decided that I couldn’t keep everything to myself. I told my wife that I missed her and that I felt like we had become disconnected. I specifically told her that I wasn’t blaming her for our lack of intimacy and wasn’t asking her to stop reading.

She initially looked surprised. She said she hadn’t realized I felt that way. From her perspective, she was simply trying to find something enjoyable for herself after spending most of her day dealing with work and the children.

I told her that I understood that completely. I also explained that I wanted her to have time for herself. My concern wasn’t that she was reading too much. It was that we seemed to have stopped making time for each other.

She admitted that she had also noticed the distance between us. She said she often felt exhausted and overwhelmed, and reading was one of the few activities that allowed her to temporarily forget about everything else.

That conversation changed the way I looked at the situation. I realized that the romance novels might not actually be the cause of our problems. They could simply have been an escape from problems that already existed.

We talked about how our lives had changed since becoming parents. We had stopped going on dates because finding childcare was difficult. We rarely had uninterrupted conversations. Even when we had free time, we were usually too tired to do anything together.

We also realized that we had both been waiting for the other person to make the first move. I was waiting for my wife to show more interest in me, while she was apparently waiting for me to notice how exhausted she was and help create more space for her.

Instead of arguing about her books, we decided to focus on our marriage. We started making small changes. Sometimes we would put our phones away after the children went to sleep and simply sit together. Other times, we would watch something we both enjoyed or talk about things that had nothing to do with parenting.

We also started making more effort to spend time together outside the house. It wasn’t always a traditional date. Sometimes it was just getting coffee together while a family member watched the kids. Other times, we would take a short walk together.

Those small moments made a bigger difference than I expected. We slowly started talking more openly again. I began understanding how much pressure my wife had been carrying, and she began understanding how isolated I had felt.

Her romance novels didn’t disappear from her life, and I didn’t ask her to give them up. She still enjoys reading them, but we both became more conscious of making room for our actual relationship as well. Her hobby wasn’t something I needed to compete with.

Our marriage didn’t suddenly become perfect. We still have stressful days, tired evenings, disagreements, and the challenges that come with raising two young children. But we are now more willing to talk about those problems instead of allowing them to quietly create distance between us.

Looking back, I think it would have been easy to blame the romance novels for everything. They were visible, and it was tempting to believe they were replacing something in our marriage. But the deeper issue was that we had gradually stopped investing time and energy in each other. The books may have provided my wife with an escape, but our struggling marriage needed communication, attention, and effort from both of us. Reconnecting didn’t happen overnight, but recognizing the real problem gave us a chance to start rebuilding the relationship we had nearly lost.