How to Cope? Wife Suddenly Obsessed with Spicy Books
This isn’t specific to books, but more so my wife of 10 years suddenly being overcome with an obsession with reading - mainly smutty/spicy romance novels filled with consensual non-consent and primal romance scenes. She’s told me she reads them for the plots and prefers more “thriller style books, but I have a hard time believing her as I keep seeing her devour entire books within days (she’s currently reading “God of Wrath” by Rina Kent on her kindle…)
Her friend convinced her to start reading, and I encouraged her as it seemed like a healthy replacement for Tik-Tok doom scrolling.
Now, she spends hours per day reading. She locks herself in the bathroom to take a bath almost every single night and is sequestered for over 1-1.5 hours while she enjoys her books. She has slowly stopped responding to my texts when I’m away from home and has admitted her infatuation with having to “finish the chapter” takes priority over most things in the moment.
We have 3 small kids and I’ve been doing the lions share of cooking, cleaning, and caring for the kids lately.
You see, when this first started, she would read in bed , next to me at the end of the night. It was cute. It has now turned into her being a part of a “spicy” book club with her friends and secretly texting them in group texts all day long about very spicy scenes and book plots.
I often overhear her discussing with great passion how “hot” or “sexy” things are - away from me (on purpose).
Before anyone asks - our sex life has been amazing. We do it regularly. I’ve made a conscious effort of the last year to play into her recently professed kinks and fantasies, in hopes to keep things fun and satisfying for her.
We’ve started to argue about this as I expressed my feelings of frustration to her, and she didn’t see why anything would be a problem. I told her I’m starting to feel a little jealous and emasculated because of how intensely she enjoys reading these fantasy romance books.
Let me be clear with this - It’s not the act of reading. It’s feeling like she’s fantasizing about characters and book scenes 24/7 and gossiping about it with her friends in a very secretive and “wishful thinking” way, when I’m giving my absolute heart and soul to have the most fun and satisfying sex life she could ever want.
It’s also starting to make me feel like a straight up “simp”, honestly. I’m doing so much around the house and taking over many roles around the house on top of working full time - that I feel cucked by fantasy characters she’s always discussing and reading about with a smirk on her face as she emotionally drools in the corner of our couch, cuddled up with blankets and lost in an alternate reality.
What am I supposed to do here? I’ve tried playing the supportive and chill husband role where I’m just cool with all of it, and it backfired in my face because she went deep down the rabbit hole with her friends. I’m now voicing my honest feelings and insecurities about her sudden change and new found infatuation and it’s giving her toxic jealous immature boy vibes from me… she says things like “I don’t feel like I can read around you anymore” or “I feel like I need to hide my reading” and I don’t want her to feel that way - I just want to feel respected and not iced out as her husband. I literally feel like romance/smut books are cucking me.