Tell you what, When I addressed things with my wife, I had been married seven years, was 34, had a 4 1/2 year old and a 7 month old baby. Sound familiar?
We also had what most would say is a pretty good relationship, the only thing really lacking was the physical intimacy, and I was the only one that felt that.
If you've seen some of my posts as you said, you might have caught that when I sat down late one night to tell my wife that I had been unhappy for a lot of the past 7 years, it floored her. She did not take it all at well. She knew we had points here and there where I'd complain and she knew I wasn't happy, but it shocked her that it had affected so much of my life for so long and I had never told her. She cried and was really hurt to find out that I felt she had not been meeting my emotional needs for all this time. As she so aptly put it, how the hell would I feel if she told me that? A very honest question. She also could not understand how I could be happy and so unhappy at the same time, it didn't make any sense to her.
The baby woke up and she had to go up and take care of him, and I was left going to sleep with a sick feeling in the pit of stomach that I had irrevocably damaged our relationship by bringing it up. I felt stuck between backing off completely, but not wanting to give her a belief that I was just sorry and to forget it.
The next day when we talked, I held her hand and the first thing I did was tell her about all the wonderful things she does for me. How she does make me happy in so many ways, but it's just that our marriage is not all that it could be, and for me the biggest thing missing was the feeling of love and being wanted that only intimacy could really fulfill. I re-affirmed that I needed to really have a long talk with her about what my emotional needs are, but I also framed it as that I wanted to be the best husband and father I could and make our marriage truly something special, and that would require a lot of work from me.
I was actually already a pretty good father and a romantic husband, but that didn't mean there wasn't plenty of room for improvement, so I made sure she understood that this wasn't just about her, but I had an equal amount of work to do and that I wanted each of us to be the best possible partners we could be. I also took 100% pressure off of her on the sex side of things. I told her her flat out that I understood our baby (who is the worlds worst sleeper) made it impossible to address everything now, and that we could talk about what she could do now as long as we made our long terms goals clear and steadily worked towards them. I acknowledged the awful timing of it all, but said that just gave us the time to really talk things out without any pressure to change our sex life NOW. Things still didn't progress as rapidly as I wanted, but about a year later, I am very happy with where we are.
I didn't see either how my wife would be so reactive to what I said. I was hoping in my mind that she'd just feel so sorry now that she truly realized and would change for me to make me happy. What an idiot I was. But the hurt was short, like ripping off a bandaid, and it opened a line of communication that we had never had. The most important thing I did was make sure I communicated that she wasn't alone, that I had an equal amount of changes to make for myself, and that we would slowly work things out together. I told her that no matter what changed or didn't, I would always love her, I would never leave her or have an affair, but I was committed to improving our marriage to be the best it could be.
Just be loving and affectionate and re-enforce all the amazing ways she is the love of your life to help offset the shock. Don't back off the changes you need to make, just take it slow. You are in love with you wife, happy in everything else, and have made it through 7 years, you can afford to work on this slowly and be patient for the moment because you have a baby. There is very little more exhausting and draining for a woman than having a child, as you know.