Even though clearly a troll thread, lots of good replies (the tongue-in-cheek ones). Will bite also.
Do not think of it as an opposition. Go out of your way to facilitate things that are really important to your spouse. In a healthy relationship, this should be reciprocal. If you have to fight it out, it's already too late.
That said, lots of things that mattered to me (like what type of car, where to go on holiday) I'm completely indifferent about now in my 40s. Probably kids do that to you. Lost my will to argue as long as I can buy the running shoes i want. All I care for is seeing happy faces on the people around me.
Co-parenting and make it a point that my boy see’s I am in charge, as his father. Women instinctively will always ‘try to take’ charge. It is up to us to stand firm and keep our role especially when a child is involved.
Marriage is a partnership. You're both grown-ass adults who should know how to work together towards common goals, and discuss individual goals and support each other.
I'd recommend working towards that, and maybe getting a marriage therapist to help you if you haven't had that modeled in either of your lives before. Better to pay a marriage therapist now than to pay divorce lawyers later if possible.
Good luck.
Do you think it would be possible for two people to discuss things and do everything else you said while also agreeing the final word belongs to one person or the other? Why do you act like those two are so diametrically opposed when they are not at all in the slightest? Irrational much?
Look, I understand you may have had poor modeling in your life about how adulting works. There is little I could do on a message board to remedy that.
Let me break it down some, though.
The idea is that someone has the "final say." That's not how partnership works. It's about consensus. Both partners need to agree.
Now, this doesn't mean certain tasks and or areas of management cannot be delegated to one or the other partner, who is given authority to make decisions over how to execute the partnership's plan as to those areas.
But the idea of "final say" is inherently selfish and detrimental to a partnership.
Irrational? Nope. The idea of one person having "final say" in a partnership is irrational. It's also just not reality. In the USA there is this thing called "divorce."
A spouse might think they have the "final say" over something, or should have the "final say" over something. But their spouse is not their employee, or their property; that spouse can just walk and leave the partnership.
Being in a partnership doesn't mean you have to check with your spouse each time you make a decision on something; that's not what it means. It does mean that you need to check in regularly with each other about your goals, your plans, and making sure you are on the same page about how to handle things. You know, building consensus.
Or, you know, you can be shallow and selfish and have no real friendships or connections and instead move about the world in a purely transactional, selfish sense where no one likes you—they only tolerate you, at best.
Plenty of folks choose this route, I suppose. Free country. Keeps those divorce lawyers in business.
In a healthy relationship, it can't be one-sided. Both my spouse and I have agreed on this explicitly and implicitly. Most everything requires creative solutions and/or compromise that meet what we both want.
Obviously a troll thread, but in a good marriage, nobody is “in charge”
Ultimately, I have the final say in all decisions in my household. My wife and I generally agree on almost everything, but my wife wants me to lead our family. I do. It works great. If you're a man and you're not leading your family, expect problems.
Like, dislike, whatever. This is truth.
My wife wants me to lead the family, but she hates giving up control. And I don't care very strongly on all but a few decisions anyways.
She decides most of the things, but I control the budget. On the big stuff, we usually come to the same decision. An example of this is where we sent our oldest (now in Kindergarten) to school. I decided, before she did, that we would send her to public school. That was my wife's least favorite decision, but she came to conclusion (like I had) that she doesn't have the energy to home school and we don't have enough money for private school.
Question in the title. Did you ever discuss this with your wife, or do you feel like there is one person who clearly has final say on things?
It's always a team effort, I'm fine with being wrong at times, and we continue on to reach what we want or a solution, and we're comfortable knowing it all works out in the end.
If I’m being honest, I think for the first 7-8 years, it was her. We talked about things but it was mostly yes.
Only what I could describe as a chaotic household came to light. I’ve never seen neighbors or anyone really argue and fight like we had. It was absolutely soul sucking and I assume it was a combination of upbringing (both of us), meds/hormones (her), and control issues (both of us). Starting a year ago, I drew very hard lines on respect, behavior, kids homework, and financial decisions. I’m at heart a very peaceful man and she had a temper. At this point, she gets basically full control on family activities and household because she does well there and all other decisions run through me.
Every “transition” of power you might say was a brutal drag out fight on her part of losing control. It was a peaceful discussion on my end…. Of the reality of the situation. Never telling her I am “taking control” and simply pointing out the obvious chaos in our current setup.
Things are a lot better and peaceful now. We need to work on aligning with kids discipline and then finally our relationship again. During the chaos and instability, she threatened leaving several times, which has severely impacted my romantic feelings toward her. The only reason I’m still married is because of kids and the economic difficulties of raising several young kids. I’m hopeful things can get better, next step is therapy to repair everything.
My best advice to young men, if your upbringing wasn’t great like mine, get lots of solo therapy before thinking seriously about dating and marriage. A passive man (like I was, strong on the outside and weak on the inside) can ruin a relationship just as quickly as a temperamental man. Date a lot, live with women, be slow to commit. You can always date younger to have a family. Study her family. I have watched nearly every pitfall either of our parents had be recreated and re-enacted with us. It is almost comedic.
I think this is a really important lesson. When my kids are older, my strong advice is don’t ever marry someone with anger issues or a quiet “crazy side”. It might seem fun when you’re dating, but it’s so not worth it. They very often have very little self-awareness and it will break you down. Even if there’s a trace of uncontrollable anger, RUN. Its soul-sucking.