</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> she's very much an independent person and would see this as keeping her tied down. (As applies to things like shopping and going out with the girls)
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I kind of like Dr Phil's common sense approach to this. He asks the wife, "On a scale of 1 to 10 how badly do you want to do X?" (whatever it is, buy something, go somehwere, whatever)
She might say, "10".
Then he asks the husband, "Now on a scale of 1 to 10 how badly do you NOT want her to do X?"
And if he says 1 or 2 then she can probably go ahead and do X without causing resentment. But if he says, 8 or 9, then they have a problem that they need to discuss further and try to come to a solution.
If your wife is like mine used to be, she resents even having to discuss this with you. She feels like her independence is her identity. At some point, hopefully she will realize that the choice is very clear; she will have to choose between being independent, also known as "single", and a happy marriage. Happy marriages are composed of interdependent partners, not independent. I believe that my wife does understand this now as we seem to discuss decisions more than we did when we were first married.
Also, "independence" is a word that WWs use a great deal. Once the A is over, that word is not used so often.
<small>[ February 23, 2005, 03:46 PM: Message edited by: legato ]</small>
