His, Hers, Ours

[ScrimpAndSave]

:: passes the popcorn ::

[PrincessPerky]

Thank you Jeffery for stepping in, I am sorry you had to.

[pearlieq]

I am the head of my household, because my wife say's I am.

While the whole "submit to your husband because the Bible says it" makes my skin crawl, I can't see any objection to the above. Presumably she's an intelligent woman with free will. If that's how she wants to live her life, it's no one's business but her and her husband's.

When both partners, couples, whatever do not agree on something that has to be decided, HOW DO YOU GET IT SOLVED?

DH and I have an absolutely egalitarian marriage and I wouldn't tolerate anything but. We are fully equal.

When we are in a position where we are completely deadlocked we don't take any action until a compromise can be worked out.

Take your car example--I want to spend less than the allotted 12k, he wants to spend more. We would both lay out our arguments for our position. If one of us can convince the other, problem solved. Likely we will see merit in each other's arguments and meet in the middle--say we agree to spend 1k more to get a car with a particular safety feature.

If we can't sway each other or compromise, we evaluate the relative "strength" of our arguments and one of us may possibly choose to give in. I might decide "I would prefer, on principle, to stick to our budget, but this seems really important to DH. We have extra money set aside, so it wouldn't be the end of the world to spend a little extra on a car for him".

Or, he may think "I really want this snazzy new car, but I understand that our emergency fund is low and that really bothers DW. I can make do with a less expensive car this time."

If we were still at an impasse, we would walk away from the dealership until a mutually agreed-upon solution could be found.

If we still couldn't work out an agreement, honestly, we'd likely divorce.

I know it sounds kind of funny, divorcing over a car, but it wouldn't really be about the car. We would be divorcing because we couldn't work together as a team and compromise. And if you can't do that, why bother being married?

Obviously we're still married, so somehow compromise and respect for each other's desires has prevailed.

I can only imagine a few issues where a true compromise possibly couldn't be reached (i.e. whether or not to have kids, fidelity, conversion to a new religion). In that case, again, divorce may have to be the ultimate resolution to the issue.

[maat55]

[

QUOTE=pearlieq;186459]While the whole "submit to your husband because the Bible says it" makes my skin crawl, I can't see any objection to the above. Presumably she's an intelligent woman with free will. If that's how she wants to live her life, it's no one's business but her and her husband's.

A long on going joke in our family is that I fall fourth in the order of importance, behind my two daughters and the dog. Fizgig best describes our way of making decisions. Things that I consider very important and she doesn't, get desided by me and vise versa.

If we were still at an impasse, we would walk away from the dealership until a mutually agreed-upon solution could be found.

I'm not locked on setting a price, just locked on the determination to only pay cash. And she's OK with that.