Daleth

How would it feel to you, though, to always acquiesce, to always have your spouse make the final decision no matter how strongly you felt about your position? How great does that sound to you? It sounds awful to me. It's not so bad if you're the person making the decisions, though.

Again, I'm not trying to convince anyone that there's just one right way. I've been arguing against someone who is. If yguy's version of "traditional" marriage works for him and his spouse or anyone, more power to them.

Dal

fatherphil

it seems that the assumption here is that the one with veto power always uses it to their own advantage. if the wife and i disagree on where to vacation, you must assume that we would end up going where i want to go. is that true?

Dr Rick

...why don't you tell us?

scigirl

Well consider your previous statement, fatherphil:

I was just wondering if you were married, or if you had ever been in a serious relationship.

I haven't been married, but I have been in a fairly serious relationship. When it came time for vacations - the most important thing was that I wanted to be with him and he wanted to be with me. So it didn't really matter where we went - it was a win/win situation. We did occasionally have spats about which family we would visit on a trip, for example. But the times we agreed on where to go definitely outnumbered those situations. I can't speak to the finances part because we had our own money.

If you marry someone that you are compatible with on many levels - than the "wins" (the situations where both partners are happy) are going to outnumber the situations where "my wife won't let me buy the 2000 inch TV, being married sucks." If all you want is freedom to do whatever you want, whenever you want, then don't get married.

But marriage isn't the only thing that can limit our choices, now, is it? There are a great many things that I can't (or rather shouldn't) do because I want to be a physician. I can't go out and drink every night, because I'll be on call. I can't wear sloppy jeans to work. I can't take 30 vacations a year. I can't do drugs, cuz I think they test our urine. I can't leave my work at work. But guess what - that's a choice I'm making, because I feel the benefits of this career, for me, are going to outweigh the downsides. Because guess what - I don't want to wear sloppy jeans to work, I don't want to drink every night, I don't do drugs (except advil) and I like what I do, so it's ok if I do some work at home. That's what I want.

Similar to a marriage - I would rather find someone to be happy with, share my dreams with, bore him with patient stories, wake up next to him every morning - than be "free." I think of that line from Desparado by the Eagles, "Freedom, ah freedom, that's just some people talking/your prison is walking through this world all alone."

Here's another example I thought of. Remember when you were a kid, and you couldn't wait to be an "adult" so you didn't have to take naps, and you could eat chocolate for dinner every night and stay up really really late? Well then we become adults, and all of a sudden, we want to take naps, and we want to eat more than just sweets, and go to bed early!! Again - that "freedom" we desired as a kid was a bit of an illusion, wasn't it?

I think a similar thing happens when you are married, or in a serious relationship. Suddenly you don't just want to do whatever you want, instead you want to be with your partner. Whether it's in Ireland, or the local bowling alley. You want to be together and make each other happy. I don't see a lot of decisions that married couples make as compromises - just choices and situations. If someone continually makes the choices, and excludes the thoughts and wishes of the other, there will be resentment. The only couples I know that are pissed off about compromise are the ones where one person makes most of the decisions. I know couples where the wife is domineering, and couples where the husband is domineering. These marriage will probably fail.

I've never heard a couple complain that "Dammit, we take turns visiting families on Christmas, and we take turns deciding where to go on vacations. This marriage sucks." Sorry I just haven't heard that one yet.

scigirl

fatherphil

dr. rick, how can i tell you what your assumption is?

sci girl, married 19 years and got the scars to prove it. how are the 2 quotes you list incongruous?

Dr Rick

{attack deleted}

fatherphil

gee, and here i assumed you were interested in discussion. guess i was wrong about that.

ask me a straight question and i'll give you a straight answer.

scigirl

Ok. Well here's my question. How can you always get your way and not feel guilty about it, and also allow your wife to have her way sometimes? I'm surprised that you don't see any contradiction in the two quotes I posted from you. Please elaborate further - perhaps examples would help. How do and your wife make decisions - and do you consider it an equal partnership, or a dominant/submissive relationship, or something else (that is if you want to clarify - since your personal life is your business. But like I have stated many times, I don't like hypothetical crap - I like real live examples!!)

scigirl

fatherphil

i consider it an equal partnership but of course sometimes i feel taken advantage of.

if she wants to go to aspen and i want to go to mexico and i finally decide we go to aspen, i do not get to blame the frostbite on her or complain or act like i'm giving in for consideration at a later time. we just are going to aspen and if things go wrong there the resposibility falls upon my shoulders for having made the final determination. i figure you just do stuff out of consideration for one another without any strings attached. i'd want to sometimes get to do what i want without having to go through some sort of negotiation process and series of trade offs and i'd want her to have the same opportunity.

you can pm me if you want some real world decisions we've made through this process if you really want to know.

Daleth

It seemed to me that in the previous examples you listed, you were talking about major life decisions for the most part. Whether or not to have a baby and suchlike. If where to go on vacation is that serious a decision for our couple, they have bigger problems than who's the leader or how to compromise.

You describe a form of compromise, except for one party always having veto power. What exactly does this "veto power" get you? It sounds like the illusion of being in control. When do you use this veto power? Do you get to decide in each case whether it's her turn to get her way without strings? What if you decided to stop giving her turns? Do you think your leadership would remain intact for long? If it wouldn't, was it real leadership or the illusion of leadership?

If it's a major life decision that you disagree on, does one of you get your way without strings attached? Does just one of you get to decide when it's time to have a child? If there's strong disagreement on a subject like this it seems to me that you'd better both give a little and come up with something you can both live with, even if it's not exactly how either of you want it. If you use your veto power on a big issue like that, it's not a less-than-ideal vacation... it's the rest of your lives.

Here's a real-life situation. Husband has something of a mid-life crisis and decides he hates his career. Up to now he's been quite successful at a desk job, but now he wants to give it up and move far across country to join and old friend in a business venture opening a new fast-food chain. Wife is a freelance writer and can take her job anywhere. However they have 2 kids, one in gradeschool and the other in middle school. They have always lived near her family and the kids are very close with their cousins and other relatives. Also they would have to mov away from the wife's mother who has just lost her husband of over 50 years. The wife doesn't want to move and thinks the business venture is very risky.

Can either husband or wife just get what they want with no strings attached? This decision is very important to both of them. Either one would be giving up a lot. Do they do it his way or her way or do they try to make a compromise?

Dal