He doesn’t have to do what he said he would do. He does not need your permission to change his mind.
Not sure I would completely agree.
If I’m in partnership with someone, and we have agreed a course of action, I (as a mature, assertive adult) would advise the other adult if I subsequently changed my mind and planned to take a different course of action.
Think of two co-directors of a business, agreeing a business plan, then one of the directors decides to do something that goes completely against the business plan.
Marriage isn’t a business. Sometimes one person just changes their mind. When it’s something this trivial, the adult thing for the other person to do is just let it go.
Honestly, I don’t know what I was thinking here.
In a marriage this rocky, nothing is trivial.
What I would have said.
I completely agree with Diogenes. If the state of the marriage is such that one partner can’t agree to one thing, then assess the situation and adjust course, then the marriage is in crappy shape.
Look, last weekend we had a guy come to look at a plumbing problem. My wife was going out for the day, and had been to the cash machine recently, and I had not. I had my credit card to pay the actual fee for the service; she left me $20 to use as a tip. I agreed that this would be an appropriate tip.
Plumber comes. It is very difficult to identify the problem in question. He spends four hours at my house, trying different approaches, going way above and beyond the call of duty for a Sunday afternoon. He’s eventually stymied, but promises to research the problem and return the following weekend with a new approach. He charges me only the initial company-mandated assessment fee.
Now, my wife had initially suggested that $20 was an appropriate tip, and I had agreed to this. But given the amount of work the plumber had put into the job, his unusually pleasant and pliable demeanor, the fact that he didn’t charge me for the services he performed (which he would have been within his rights to do), and the fact that he will certainly be coming back again, I decided all on my own to increase that figure considerably.
I made this decision, blatantly going back on the initial plan I made with my wife.
I made this decision based on my own judgment regarding the evolving situation. I did not call her for permission to change the plan.
I made this decision, and did not greet her at the door in sackcloth and ashes to repent.
Was I wrong? If not, how does my situation differ from that of Foxy40’s husband? He agreed to something, then once he was on the scene applied his own judgment and determined that a change of plan was warranted. Just as I did. What’s the difference?
I have never heard of tipping a plumber[/hijack]
He wasn’t a plumber, exactly; he was an employee of a Mr. Rooter. And I’m Italian; I tip everybody.
Ok, that makes sense – I’ve had plumbers helpers (ha!) in my house, doing the grunt work after the real plumber had assessed what to do. It hadn’t occurred to me to tip them, I figured they make a decent hourly wage. But maybe I’m assuming too much, since they’re probably not licensed and maybe don’t make the union rate.[/hijack again, and I’m done]
Take the same situation, agree to give the tip, decide that plumbers don’t deserve tips and keep the money.
Now your wife is embarrassed because she feels you acted imappropriately and made the family look like cheap asses. (I don’t tip plumbers either but it is your scenario)
Then we are talking apples to apples.
If, for whatever reason, I adjudged that the plumber did not deserve a tip, I would be entitled to withhold the tip entirely at my discretion. I would not be expected to ask permission beforehand, or beg forgiveness afterward.
Look, it comes down to discretion. I have been in situations where I had every intention of offering money for something, but read the situation and the people involved and came to the determination that in that particular situation, it wouldn’t be appropriate.
Your husband was there. He had access to cues that you didn’t see - the behavior, word choice, tone, and actions of the other couple, specifically - and he made a judgment that offering the money was not the best course of action in that particular situation.
Now, either you trust his judgment, or you don’t.
You don’t.
I’m not saying that makes you a bad person or anything; I’m not even saying that you’re wrong to not trust his judgment. I don’t know him from Adam. But if you don’t trust his judgment, don’t trust him to adapt to a situation given the conversational and other clues he is given, then you have a significant problem and it will never go away.
My dad invited a girl from church to attend an amusement park with me one day. (He assigned me friends frequently. I gained the skill of getting to know, and getting along with people I wouldn’t have normally chosen as friends for myself. It’s not as awful as it sounds.)
Anyway, this girl brought her own money for food and goodies. My dad checked with her before turning us loose in the park (another reason to give your kid her own money) to make sure she had enough to buy her own lunch. She did.
Then we went on a roller coaster and her little girly wallet flew out of her pocket while we were on the ride. The Ride Guys let us look around, but we couldn’t find it. It wasn’t even lunch time yet, and my friend now had not a dime on her. I found my parents and told my dad what happened. He peeled off a crisp $20 bill, handed it to her without a word and quietly pulled me aside and gave me a little extra to cover us both, just in case. ETA: This was pretty unusual for my dad, because the original spending money I’d brought was from my own babysitting earnings – he hadn’t given me a penny for something like that up until that moment. In retrospect, this is pretty funny to me. I was on my own, but he was more worried about somebody else’s kid starving all day than he was concerned if I had any money of my own.
Based on that experience, I’d go along with the herd and say you did the right thing and your husband was being wrong for saying he’d do one thing but doing something else instead. Bad form! I would have done what you did: drove over there and handed off some fun-money for the kids. If your kid comes home with all of it, that’s fine. But I’d be annoyed if I took your kid and you didn’t even offer to give your own child food money (not that I’d mind in the least feeding your kid and mine too, if I had kids).
I suspect I’d like your husband. (I like mine just fine, though). I really dislike when I intend to treat and money is pressed on me. I dislike it enough that unless my kid REALLY LIKED the kid in question and there were overriding considerations, that would be the last time I’d put myself in that position.
I don’t expect my husband to be aware every of situation and every way to handle it nor does he expect me to be either. When I say with no hesitation, this is how you handle this particular situation, then no, he doesn’t get to change the rules. If he tells me that I don’t have the jiffy lube guy do everything extra he says I need, I don’t. I do not take it upon myself to assess the jiffy lube guy has a nice face and wouldn’t cheat me. I do as I was told by the person who makes those decisions.
I make the social decisions in the family. He does not and never has.
I missed this before I saw it quoted upon. I certainly did not have to insist that forcefully they take the money. I handed it to her and she accepted it with a thank you and a “that isn’t necessary”. I won’t say that she thought we were cheap asses for not offering it when we dropped off our kid but I will say that I wouldn’t be surprised to hear the thought HAD crossed her mind that we left the kid with no money at all.
OK. I say this with no judgment whatsoever, but you and I have absolutely no basis for continued discussion on this subject. We view marriage differently.
I couldn’t live for fifteen minutes in a marriage like the one you describe. But I don’t have to, and you do, so I guess if it works for you, that’s what matters. Off I go to other things.
(P.S. Always tip plumbers, folks. Always tip anyone you can afford to tip, but especially always tip someone who might have to one day unstick and clean a feces-stuffed toilet at 3:00 in the morning).
[QUOTE=storyteller0910]
OK. I say this with no judgment whatsoever, but you and I have absolutely no basis for continued discussion on this subject. We view marriage differently. QUOTE]
Absolutely no judgement. People create their own rules and expectations in marriage, in friendships, in parent-child relationships. It would be a boring world if everyone viewed things the same.
From my assessment of your posts, you have a marriage that you both trust each other to handle any and all situations the same or at least as well as the other. I must say that is very nice.
How about this. My wife once went to get a wedding gift for one of my brothers. We agreed beforehand on what she should get but she came home with something else and said she’d changed her mind when she saw it. Should she have called me for permission? Should I have been upset because she “disobeyed” me? Should I have demanded an appropriate “excuse?” Would anyone on this board have supported me in that kind of demeaning, controlling attitude?
What I said was “ok – looks nice.” It never would have crossed my mind to be upset about it or to feel that she had trangressed against me in some way.
Your husband didn’t need your permission to cchange his mind. He didn’t need to justify himself and he doesn’t owe you an apology. He is not your child. He is not your dog. Somehow, I doubt that you call him to get his permission ever time you change your mind about something. The issue at question is trivial. Be an adult and let it go.
I’m sure it’s not important to you, but it is to some people. I would be uncomfortable meeting with the other family again if I didn’t give them any money. I’m sure Foxy would have been too.
He said he did not give the money because they didn’t ask for it. That is poor justification.
I don’t see it as an order. I see it as two people agreeing on something important enough to one of them, and then the other person simply ignoring the agreement. Agreeing to do something and then simply not doing it is very petty. He should have talked it out with his wife the night before. Otherwise it’s like she has no say in the matter.
Nothing here is scientific fact. This thread is about a difference of opinion between a husband and wife. We are all bickering about whose opinion was justified. Right?
There is no way we can know this from what was written in this thread. I grant you that it could be true.
I shouldn’t have said “disobeyed”. Foxy did not give an order. It was like you said, a suggestion. Not all suggestions can be disregarded without justification. You need a good reason for doing something. If you don’t you’d be wrong in doing it. It is not demeaning or belittling to ask someone to have a good reason when he does something you don’t like.
Let’s say you asked your wife to buy you a certain brand of coffee when she goes to the store. She comes back with a cheap generic brand that you know tastes like cardboard. She tells you that we don’t need the expensive coffee and that generic brand will do just fine. She has gone to the store before and knows the cost of both brands of coffee. She just deicide to change her mind on this trip. You now have cheap cardboard tasting coffee because your wife ignored a decision that was trivial to her, but important to you. Would you be upset? Would you ignore the decision?
Here we have the same thing. There is one thing important to Foxy that her husband did not do and did not even give her a chance to defend her decision. What is more annoying is that Foxy’s husband might have ignored doing a suggestion that he thought was trivial, but was important to Foxy. If he thought the money wasn’t that important, he should have gave it to the family.
I understand you don’t think this is an important issue, but it is important to Foxy. You can’t just say Foxy shouldn’t be upset because it isn’t important to you.
If he secretly doesn’t want the lists, then I will agree with you. We can’t really know anything unless he comes in and says something.
Would you trust someone who told you he didn’t give any money because no one asked for it?