interesting, i shower my wife with attention (good kind) and it seems to turn her off, she takes it for granted, it annoys her, she pushes me away, she rolls over in bed and says she's tired. it's almost like she would rather be mistreated. is my marriage over? possibly. i've been trying for a year to do everything i can to get her involved, Intimate Life, church "genogram" stuff, she simply is not interested in working on it. she's burned out on our two daughters, she doesn't "have the energy" to put into our marriage.
should i cheat on her? (believe me, i have plenty of opportunity)
It sounds to me like what you interpret as positive attention may not be what she interprets as such. Learn to listen. Ask questions if she's not talking but listen. If she doesn't know or doesn't explain it then tell her how it makes you feel. No accusations, just explain your side because you don't really know her side unless she tells you.
I am guessing here, but is this just about sex? If it is it might be your wifes sex drive has diminished after the kids were born, and a doctor could help her with that (though you'd better be very very careful how you approach THAT subject). If it is deeper, emotional, then my first suggestion should help.
There are two reasons why I do not want to deal with Christian marriage. The first is that Christian doctrines on this subject are extremely unpopular. The second is that I have never been married myself, (he was married later in life after this book was written) and therefore, can only speak at it secondhand. But in spite of that, I feel I can hardly leave the subject out in an account of Christian morals.
The Christian idea of marriage is based on Christ's words that a man and wife are to be regarded as a single organism - for that is what the words "one flesh" would be in modern English. And the Christians believe that when He said this He was not expressing a sentiment but stating a fact - just as one is stating a fact when one says a lock and a key are one mechanism, or that a violin and a bow are one musical instrument. The inventor of the human machine was telling us that its two halves, the male and the female, were made to be combined together in pairs, not simply on the sexual level, but totally combined. The monstrosity of sexual intercourse outside marriage is that those who indulge in it are trying to isolate one kind of union (the sexual) from all the other kinds of union which were intended to go along with it and make up the total union. The Christian attitude does not mean that there is anything wrong about sexual pleasure, any more than about the pleasure of eating. It means that you must not isolate that pleasure and try to get it by itself, any more than you ought to try to get the pleasures of tasting without swallowing and digesting, by chewing things and spitting them out again.
** If you cheat on your wife, the woman with whom you cheat will just be someone you chew up and spit out, and that's all you can be to her.