Her religion wasn't a selection criteria, rather it is just a bonus that we found out about later. The only reason it matters is that it provides a little bit more context for her when dealing with us. I agree, there is a whole spectrum of "catholic". We are probably more traditional catholic than most American Catholics.
We've been more on track, but never completely. Things started going downhill a few months before we married (that's when SSM crept in, but I didn't recognize it then). She stopped with the sex saying she felt guilty doing it outside of marriage and promised it would be better when we married. It never did get better, in fact we only ML once on our 8 day honeymoon. I think about the same time we started to lose any playfulness in our R. I wrote off my misgivings at the time as pre-nuptial jitters rather than a red flag. I'm sure some of the decline in our R is due to building resentment over the years over the M not being what I thought it would be and it not changing the way I expected it to. I didn't have the tools back then to know how to put it back on track, so over the course of the first 17 years I let it get further and further off track. The last 6 years or so I've been doing a lot of reading, introspection, and trying to fix the problems, often with her putting up roadblocks. At times, I think I've done more damage than good over these past few years, but on the other hand, staying where it was wasn't working either, although she thought it was because I was keeping most of the resentment and disappointment bottled up. At least now, I am keeping a lot less in and making an effort to do things for me.
