Try the Married Red Pill subreddit. A lot of stories of married men finding TRP end up in the guy leaving anyways, which was my case after I spent some time trying to fix the relationship, which went FUBAR after I cheated. I found out I only cheated because I was supremely unhappy, it was something I thought about every day.

But that's just my case, and there was cheating involved.

Don't get your hopes up with your marriage but you can surely make some improvements. You are the lead in there, whether it takes you 15 more years to accept it. Lead the change, lead the interactions and lead her into a happier wife.

Also, TRP will, I repeat, it WILL give you the tools to make you a much happier and valuable man.

Plan a weekend date and surprise her. Book a hotel, and drive her somewhere where you can take in the local attractions. Something where you can both engage in the local attractions. It doesn't have to be expensive. I'll give you an example:

One of my girlfriends and I were going through a rough patch. I live a few hours from the shore, so I booked a hotel for the weekend at one of the tourist places (it was in October, so it was off-season, and hotels were like $60 per night). I told her to not make any plans for the weekend, that we're going on a little trip.

We left Saturday morning, and arrived just before lunch. We drove 3 hours (which allowed me to break the ice and get a conversation going), and she kept asking "Where are we going?" I kept telling her, "You'll find out when we get there." When we arrived, we checked in at the hotel, dropped our stuff off, and went off on our adventure.

It was chilly, but we took a walk on the boardwalk, stopped at the vendor places for food and drinks, and played games together at one of those arcades where you trade the tickets in for prizes at the counter. I won her some stuffed animals from the crane machines, we turned in our tickets at the counter, I let her pick out the prizes, and she had a good time.

I had brought a laptop with me with an external hard drive that I loaded up with movies that she had mentioned she wanted to see, and a few that I thought looked pretty good she might enjoy. The hotel room had a TV I could plug into and stream the movies. We stopped off at the local dollar store and picked up some movie theater snacks (juijy fruits, milk duds, small cans of soda, etc.), then stopped off at a local diner for some dinner. After dinner, it was back to the hotel for movies. The last movie we watched I made sure was one of those woman-porn movies to make her all hot and wet before turning out the lights.

Sunday morning, we got up and showered, got packed up, and checked out of the hotel. I took her to a local diner for breakfast, and we took in a few of the local specialty shops for some souvenirs. On the way back home nearby, there was an animal farm that had a free petting zoo we stopped at so we could play with the baby sheep and goats and cute little furry animals women love.

Our last stop before heading home was an airplane museum ran by veterans that had free admittance (donations accepted) and gift shop. It had a little film room that showed a half-hour clip of the airplanes and talked about the veterans that served in wars. It was very educational. We walked around the museum, taking pictures of the exhibits, stood attention when they played a video of the national anthem, bought some souvenirs from the gift shop, and I dropped a donation on our way out.

On the drive back home, she was smiling and laughing and talking about what she liked about the trip, and it was a complete 360 from where she was when we started out. The overall trip cost me about $500.

Sometimes, you just have to pull yourselves out of your comfort zone and do something spontaneous, just you and her alone in a neutral place, where neither of you can run and hide, and have to depend on each other for comfort in order to remake that connection.

You don't tell us the important part: do you have kids?

Marriage without kids is a very very simple issue, compared to marriage with kids.

So I'll assume you don't have kids.

What you need to know is that the overwhelming majority of women become boring and bored in a long-term relationship such as marriage. The next one might too, that is.

Then again, for a wife to declare that she's not happy to a husband who tries to satisfy her, that's quite a red flag. Ultimately, it's her responsibility to make herself happy. Not that women can approach the notion of "responsibility", of course.

People want different things from a marriage and its useful to be consider what you both entered marriage wanting, how successfully you were in getting that and what you want now? Consider what has been achieved and what could be achieved. If she really can't do the job you want of a wife, then you would not be running from unhappiness as opposed to running towards what you are looking for if you quit.

Throughout history the primary purpose of marriage has been to start a family by formally joining two families together. If you are married for that purpose then has she given you good (healthy smart, well adjusted) children, will she give you good children? can she raise children well in a way that fits with your values. Is she sensible with money? Does she like to spend on the same things that you do or do you feel she is wasteful or values things that are empty? These questions are more important than the question of feelings and spark.

Women get dull as a rule because they are seldom ever into the things we are into. One never gets a woman who is a perfect fit but if you are committed to one and have children with her, and if she is raising them well enough and not causing great friction, it may be that you need to look elsewhere to find mental stimulation. It is not very likely that you will ever find a long term stimulating partnership with a woman unless you are a fairly unusual man who is pleased by the things that excite women or she is an unusual woman who is pleased by the things that excite you.

If you have done the usual modern western thing and married someone you fell in love with so that you can effectively have a housemate that you have sex with, then it can be disappointing. Most house shares end when the roomies' interests and goals diverge. You don't have to fall out with a housemate to move out, you just have to decide you would rather be somewhere else. Falling in love puts two people on a convergence course in their aims and desires, they find what stimulates the other to be valuable. They want to build something together but when that has well and truly burnt out you are left carrying a woman through life and she has to give you enough back in return for that work.

I very much like what you say about "shrinking to fit inside my wife's comfort zone". This is something I think most men do (me included). Women have smaller lives and are more easily unsettled so you, in protecting her, have to shrink you life down a bit, particularly your ambitions for personal challenge, achievement and growth. To some extent it goes with the territory but it has to be weighed in the scales with everything else. Does the cost of this marriage outweigh the benefits?

Building a family is a very great benefit and we have to accept some cost for that. It is also a great benefit to have a companion in old age with whom one has much shared history. There is also benefit in good regular sex and in cooking and domestic chores being done but do the cost/ benefit scales balance out overall to her giving an adequate return? Without children in the benefit side of the scale, I think most women need to provide more than cooking, cleaning and sex to be a genuine asset to a husband. The same technological advances that set women "free" to work outside the home make domestic chores easy for a man who has a full time job. Cooking and cleaning you did fine when you were single and you yourself know that sex with the same woman is not worth a life time of being unsatisfied mentally or you would not be asking this question.

If she is capable of being adequate in marriage (if the scales balance or could balance with some adjustment), then maybe you need to explain to her that you need to find and follow some interest of your own because you are unsatisfied with your current life. You need to grow but you are not abandoning her and what you have built together. If she won't accept it without causing misery either by ill will, jealousy or being unable to cope with your having other interests, then perhaps she is no longer adequate after all?

Seeking the ideal is unlikely to ever come off -just look at the women you know and how it worked out for them. I would be wary over throwing away adequate after 15 years as old age is never far away and how many more bundles of 15 years do you have to invest? but inadequate is by the same reasoning something that must be removed from your life while you still have time to invest in yourself and maybe another relationship too.

If you're committed to the idea that "leaving because unhappy = bad", then yeah, I can see how you're in a bit of a bind. Maybe reconsider the base assumption.

“I’m unhappy, so I’m leaving” (the thing men get burned by) vs “The relationship has hit a dead end because we’re fundamentally incompatible in growth, effort, and emotional connection.”

Naw, it's the same thing. One is just more verbose. You can throw something in there about "being on your journey", if it makes you feel better, but it's still the same thing.

It's ok, you know, to leave if you're unhappy. You don't need a "good reason". It's your life, do with it as you please. If she just isn't doing it for you any longer, that's as good a reason as any. You don't owe anyone your life.

Just make a decision. Even if it's a bad decision, it's still better than being indecisive.