You said: "but I don't think they're running around feeling like their life is a fake sham just because mom has "headaches" with dad"...
No ssmguy, they don't right now because you are hiding it from them, but in the future when they are adults, they will realize it then. They will also likely realize you are a cheater, and they will NOT condone your behavior.
You keep giving examples of how the world sees marital sex. Well I'll give you some opposite examples. When I was married before and my kids were young, two of their favorite shows were the Simpsons and Malcolm in the Middle. In both of these shows, the parents enjoy a particularly good sex life, even though they have other problems. There are many examples in both shows of their wonderful sex lives. There are examples of how they are wonderfully naughty toward each other, while the kids have no clue they share this beautiful, secret sexual life.
In one episode of Malcolm in the Middle, Hal (the father) was talking with a group of his guy friends, and they were all being very competitive about how much of this or that they have. How much money, how much vacation time, how many golf clubs, that kind of thing...and Hal is poor and was always the lowest on this list of "things" these married men had. Until it came to sex. "How many times per week do you get to have sex with your wife" was the question. Hal answered "oh, once or twice". Everyone else said he was lucky to get it once or twice a week, and Hal said "oh I thought you meant PER DAY...yeah we get it once or twice per day". And suddenly he was the king of the men for that moment, as he had more of the one thing they all wanted.
Now, this may seem to support your point...but it actually supports mine. The marriage in Malcolm in the Middle is happy and middle-classed Americans, with a healthy wife who has a healthy sex life. This is certainly not an extreme exception, or else it would never be understood by the millions of viewers who loved this show for nearly a decade.
Same with the Simpsons...no one can really understand why Marge puts up with all of Homer's shortcomings...unless you are a woman who is sexually in love with a man, like I am. THEN you can understand how a man has sexual worth to her. This woman is not totally out there in space as only one example, again, or else the millions of viewers who made this show possible would not have related to it at all.
My kids always realized, because I told them directly, that a good sex life is important. They assumed at that time that I must be having a good sex life, too. Little did they know then, that I wasn't...but of course now they get it in retrospect.
And because of my coaching, they understood the sexual humor in their two shows, Simpsons and Malcolm. It was not unusual in their minds to see a mom who was a total sex pot, there it was right there on Sunday evenings on prime time family TV shows.
