My wife deserves better than me

I am a 37M my wife is 35F. We have been together since high school where I was 17 and she was 15. She was a "Freshman" and I was a "Junior". Her friend's for a long time told her not to date me, other people over the years have told her not to date me or marry me.

Well she married me, we have been married for 9 years as of this December.

I have a lot of damage from my adolescent sexual trauma, which I have been in therapy for, including EMDR which helped.

I have been emotionally unavailable likely my whole life and I have had my "walls" up as well. My "walls" were not walls but a Fortress surrounded by a mixed high density minefield that is predesignated with artillery, backed up by Combat Support Aircraft stacked every 500 feet from 500 to 65,000 feet, and a few "salted" nuclear missiles on DEFCON 1 (salted mean cobalt tipped, it creates cobalt-60 during the fission process which is highly radioactive, toxic, and long lasting).

As of 3 weeks ago that changed, and it changed within 24 hours due to heavy introspection and some help from r/sexover30. I initially thought that the reason why I was not feeling satisfied and connected in my relationship with my wife was because we were only having sex maybe once or twice a month. It always coincided with a date night or if I had been rejected multiple times over the course of the week.

So I looked up "scheduling sex", and I asked reddit how that has worked for them in the past, and how they got over the whole time crunch of the scheduling part. Someone in that subreddit pointed out to me that I was looking at it all wrong, I needed to look at is as a mini-date.

I spent a couple of hours doing introspective thinking on it, and realized that when we started dating, and even before that with our friendship our relationship was not based on sex, it was based on communication. I waited 3 years to have sex with her (true story, she was 18 when we had sex, in fact it was a week after her 18th birthday), we lost our virginity to each other.

I realized then that our connection was communication and non-sexual touch based, even though we were doing foreplay stuff during some of our dates.

I initially informed my wife that I wanted to try this "scheduled sex" thing BEFORE I did the introspection, and she reluctantly agreed to it. Once I did the introspection I texted her during the day to tell her to not expect sex, and that I would not be expecting it either, that it could just be us laying together snuggling/cuddling and talking and if anything else happens it happens, no pressure.

When she got home, we just laid there and talked for over an hour (I swear time accelerates during these periods). At the end of it she apologized that we did not have sex and I told her I was not upset, mad or disappointed, it didn't happen and it didn't NEED to happen. The next few sessions were the same, and I learned some stuff even from the first one.

My wife was STRESSED OUT, I was not really helping out around the house, I was emotionally unavailable and detached, and this last one still hurts like hell, she saw sex with me as a "to-do" item on her list. Damn that hurts like hell. Here is the thing though, I was just using her as a glorified fleshlight, a means to get off and get an endorphin rush. I was not initiating any foreplay, it was all she gets herself ready, I get myself ready and in 10 minutes its all over. We were also not sleeping in the same room, she would fall asleep next to our daughter in her bed.

I always associated sex as intimacy, the ultimate form of it. In fact intimacy is the emotional connection and sex is the byproduct of it, the culmination of it. Sex is not an "end goal", the goal is to be connected, sex is just a part of that connection, the communication, and non-sexual touching is what builds the real connection.

After I figured all of this out my wife told me "You went from 5% emotional availability to 105%, and went from a 5 year olds emotional maturity to a 25 year olds in the span of 24 hours, it's a bit overwhelming" (this is verbatim BTW).

My wife has yet to touch a single dish in the last month (I took on the job myself, she never asked), I do the dishes because I saw how stressful it was for her, and I don't want her stressed out. I also vacuum the house after we pick up the mess our daughter creates being the category 5 hurricane of energy that she is.

We went from having sex once or twice a month to 3-5 times a week (depending on scheduling). I am also now enthusiastic about foreplay, and found that I really like giving oral to her, its kind of a new "kink" for me.

It took me 37 fucking years to figure this shit out... 37 years... her friends and the other people were right, she should have left me and never married me; I am damaged goods. Why in the hell she stayed with me much less said "YES" and "I DO" is beyond me. I feel she still deserves better than me but this is just my ranting/venting. Maybe it will end up helping someone else out. Sorry for the wall of text.