"Wife always right, even when she's wrong" - Implications for women's characters?

In My Humble Opinion
1

In this thread people brought up the oft-repeated axiom that to have a happy marriage the man always has to be the one to admit he is wrong.

Below are some examples from that thread

Assuming the above is good advice for men (and I guess if you have counter arguments or proof that it isn’t good advice, it would be good to hear from you too), what does that say about women and their character?

Basically, if we assume that in long-term relationships there will be times when the woman is in the wrong as well as times when the man is in the wrong, and if we assume that the above advice for men to always cave in is good for the long term stability and happiness of the marriage, the possible implications are one or more of the following:
[ul]
[li]Women are incapable of seeing things from another person’s point of view, which leads them to think they are always right, which is why they always expect the husband to admit he’s wrong[/li][li]Women are such egotists that even when they realize they are in the wrong, they still will not admit it and will expect the man to apologize[/li][li]Women are so insecure that, as proof of his love for her, they expect a man to apologize even when he’s wrong.[/li][li]Women are infallible, therefore men are always wrong, which is why it makes sense to expect men to always apologize ;)[/li][/ul]
If the above axiom is true, I can’t see any explanation that has a positive connotation for women.

My questions are
[ol]
[li]Do you think the above axiom for happy marriages is correct? (Are you male or female?)[/li][li]If the axiom is correct is there a way to interpret it and not have women come out in a bad light?[/li][li]If the axiom is incorrect, why has it survived for so long?[/li][/ol]

I should note that I expect Doper women to not agree with the above axiom as much, and expect responses like “I always apologize when I’m wrong and wouldn’t want a man who apologizes when I’m in the wrong”, since Doper women are in general different than the average woman out there (just as Doper men are in general different than the average man out there). If you’re a woman and you feel that the axiom is wrong, can you explain why it has survived as advice men give to each other?

My one data point: I do not live by this axiom and it makes for some very unpleasant times between me and my wife. I can see that if I caved in things would go smoother, but I just will not “apologize” when I am not in the wrong.

I think having men living in a relationship where they are expected to apologize when they are not in the wrong (just to keep the marriage stable) is a form of psychological abuse and is analogous (but of course not equivalent) to having women living in a relationship where they are expected to not say anything when their husband beats them (just to keep the marriage stable). If a marriage can only be stable via acceptance of psychological or physical abuse I don’t see it as worth saving.

2

Were the people espousing (har) the “wife’s always right, even when she’s wrong” view all men, or did any women hold to this view as well?

My guess is that this view is held by husbands who don’t want to bother to take the time to actually work things out with their wives. All that communication stuff is for chicks, they think, so better to tell her she’s right so they can go back to their fun man stuff.

3

How do people in same-sex relationships know who’s right, then?

4

Ditto. And it pisses me right off when people say things like this. Every relationship is a give and take. I admit when I’m wrong - I being the impulsive one have probably had to apologize more often.

5

  1. No. Female.

  2. n/a

  3. It is my experience that a lot of people, both men and women, don’t communicate very well. They don’t express themselves well, and they don’t listen to or understand others well. This leads to things like women saying “Oh, I don’t mind if you go play cards with Jim” when really they should have said “I’m lonely when you go play cards, would you please watch a movie with me”. Then the guy hears “I don’t mind if you go” and doesn’t notice that she also said “it would be nice if you were back by 10 pm so we could do xyz” and that causes a problem.

Women have been taught by our society to downplay their wants/needs and couch them in soft language, as well as being taught to manipulate their husbands to get what they want. This makes them unable to make direct requests, a thing I find extremely maddening. Just spit it out dammit. I do think this is changing but it’s taking a while.

Some men seem to need some instruction on how to be good listeners and how to pick up on nuances of conversation. Notice I didn’t say “all” men. For example my husband says that he really has to be “hit over the head” so to speak in order to realize, hey, this is an important point she’s making. I think it’s the old thing about men are better at noticing visual cues rather than verbal cues.

Men and women tend to have different styles of verbal communication so that often they are talking past each other. It takes a concerted effort for couples to communicate well, and frankly a lot of people are lazy and don’t want to put forth the effort.

I also notice people not being considerate of each other. So what if it’s dumb that the wife insists on the car being parked on the left side of the driveway instead of the right. That doesn’t make her “wrong” and you don’t need to win an argument about that. Perhaps that’s what some of the guys mean when they say “just give in”.
Or maybe it’s like Telperien says and men just agree so’s to get back to watching the ball game. :slight_smile:

6

I think that this is extremely disrespectful to women. It is a throwback to a time where it was ok to placate your wife by sweet little lies because you were going to just do what was right anyway, so what did it matter what she thought?

The entire idea is that women are inferior and should be condescended to.

7

The standard advise is basically correct. I only have one marriage (now ex marriage) under my belt but many females generally do not like giving sincere apologies or showing remorse in intimate relationships. My ex-wife is a good person and we were together for 17 years and she never apologized to me for a single thing or admitted that she was wrong or even slightly mistaken during that whole time. Even if she was caught in something like a checkmate situation in chess, she still couldn’t bring herself to admit it even if it was something stupid and completely non-confrontational. Her mind would spin until she could find a way out even if it meant just throwing out a completely unrelated random insult for for something I did 5 years earlier. My grandfather and I discussed this issue a few weeks ago and he is a lifelong politician, businessman, and womanizer. He told me I just had to accept that fact if I ever want to be with a female with any type of personality at all and I am starting to believe it.

***I am not anti-female in the least. I live for my two daughters and I was raised by my mother and most of my best friends are female but I can see where all of this feedback comes from and I think it does have some merit.

8

Thank you for posting this thread. It makes me really angry when I see comments like those examples in your op. If I ever wind up in a relationship in which the other person just acquiesces during a fight because I’m female and therefore obviously can’t have an argument and either admit defeat/apologize or agree to disagree, that is an immediate deal breaker for me. That’s incredibly condescending. And if I ever become one of those women, please, just shoot me.

I wonder, though, if the wives of the men quoted in the op would say that they do the exact same thing, that men just have to be agreed-with sometimes for the sake of the relationship, and their husbands just don’t realize it because they assume that their wives are sincere when they agree or apologize.

Basically, my feeling on the matter is this: don’t lie to me or expect me to need to be lied to, and I won’t lie to you or put you in the position to have to lie to me for the sake of our relationship.

9

@Polerius: see you’re not even right on this. Dude can’t ever catch a break.

10

It is unfortunately true in all too many cases, but not necessarily a universal truth.

11

I’m such a sucker for female attention that my future wife is virtually guaranteed to be right one hundred percent of the time.

12

The meme will die when it is no longer useful; that is, when “letting women win” doesn’t lead to better outcomes. For that, female behavior will have to have changed relative to when the meme originated.

13

I think it’s pejorative both to women and to men. I’ve encountered a few women who hold to this attitude- incidentally they’re all divorced.

14

Just a couple of things - [ul][li]Sometimes people exaggerate for effect. This is not necessarily a bad thing.[*]One of the great gifts my parents gave me is the gift of naivete. Even now, as I enter later middle age, it astounds me when people don’t seem to know what a mature relationship is like. [/ul] I grew up with the bland assumption that spouses always related to each other the way my father and mother related to each other. I now know that this is not necessarily the case, but the assumption remains in place. [/li]
Of course people in a committed relationship apologize when they are wrong, and even, sometimes, when they are not wrong. I don’t necessarily confine this to one sex or the other. That’s what grown-ups do. If they want to stay together, that is.

I doubt I could stay in a relationship with someone who never could admit they were wrong. Therefore, in justice, I can’t be someone like that either if I want to stay in a relationship/married with anyone else.

But here is the tricky part. Apologizing when you are not wrong is only effective when the other person doesn’t know you are doing it. If you are seen to give in just because you are tired of arguing, that doesn’t count.

This is an area where I have struggled to grow. Those of you who have interacted with me on this messageboard no doubt will be flabbergasted to find out that I am somewhat more stubborn in my opinions than the average. Hard to believe, I know, but true. :smiley: There have been times, many of them, where my wife has apologized, not because I wore her out, nor because she was humoring me exactly, but because the relationship was more important than the need for her to be correct. I know this because there have been a couple of times where I came later to believe that I was wrong. And over the years, slowly and with many set backs, I have started to be able to spot those kinds of situations in my wife.

This is quite different, in my experience, than becoming a doormat, and also from humoring anyone. It isn’t always a good idea to apologize, but it is not always a good idea to insist on having the other person acknowledge that you have “won”.

If it is important enough, and if my reasons are good, I can usually talk my wife into what I want. But if it is not important, sometimes my reasons aren’t good enough even if they seem that way to me.

YMMV, etc.

Regards,
Shodan

15

My credo for relationships is that the person who apologizes first, wins. This isn’t to say that the person has given in, it just means that the person is willing to do what it takes to deflate the situation and talk about it and come to a solution.

16

I suspect it is a matter of perspective, or rather observer bias - ask a man, he’ll say he’s always agreeing to make peace; ask his wife, she’ll be under the impression she’s the one who agrees to make peace. The reality lies somewhere inbetween. Where exactly varies from couple to couple.

I’m a married dude.

17

I don’t know about everybody. I am almost always right, my husband never admits it, and we are not particularly happy or unhappy.

The thing is, this only applies to things where there is a right answer–not opinions. For instance early in our marriage we had a long knock-down drag-out over whether Dale Evans’ horse was named Buttermilk (I said) or Buttercup (he said). We did not have the Internet to solve this, and I was right. Instead of admitting he’d been wrong, he claimed that he’d said “Buttermilk” all along and I’d simply misheard him. How could I not be pissed about that?

18

I think the advice comes from dealing with a certain personality type that occurs somewhat more often–but by no means exclusively–among men, and that is the personality type that needs to Always Be Right.

Most men are not the Always-be-right type. Neither are most women. But people of this type, in my experience, tend not to realize they do it, nor realize the damage it does in their relationships. These are the people for whom being right trumps everything and for whom there is no proportion–who played the bellhop in an episode of Law and Order is exactly the same as whether or not God exists. These are people who will question other people’s opinions (But there’s no reason for you not to like that movie. Let me prove it to you). These are the people who, even when proven wrong, will twist the situation in such a way as to show that the other person was wrong as well. They often (especially when young) do not realize that they aren’t really winning arguments–people around them are humoring them and stopping the conversation, not actually changing their minds. Living with an always-be-right type can be annoying and lonely, because you can’t discuss anything because the meta-issue of “who’s in the wrong here”? hangs over everything.

For whatever reason, the always-be-right types often realize how destructive their behavior is in a sudden epiphany. I swear it’s a physiological thing or something. In the best cases, they actually realize that other people are right sometimes, too, but more commonly what they realize is that it’s ok for other people to be wrong, and it isn’t the always-righter’s job to be the accuracy police. Once they’ve made the leap, it’s like they become True Believers, apostles of this amazing paradigm shift. Their lives shift from roller-coasters of confrontation to much smoother sailing and they tend to go around preaching to others about what an amazing system this is. They are over-correcting from the previous extreme, and yes, it can be condescending and certainly counter-productive to real problem solving.

Now then, I think this is more common among men than women, as women are more likely to have this sort of thing socialized out of them at an early age–for little girls, part of “playing nice” is taking turns being right. However, it’s not only men that have to be right all the time, nor is it the majority of men. It’s a certain personality type that has become a stereotype.

19

  1. Do you think the above axiom for happy marriages is correct?
    No, Male, living or married to my wife 9+ years.

  2. If the axiom is correct is there a way to interpret it and not have women come out in a bad light? N/A

  3. If the axiom is incorrect, why has it survived for so long?
    There are a lot of tired beliefs and stereotypes that have survived for thousands of years. This is one of them, it reinforces a paternalistic view of the husband as being superior to the wife.

20

It’s not about being superior, it’s about a certain personality quirk that is definitely prevelant in a lot of women that has become a pretty well-recognized punchline. For those of you saying how insulting it is, good for you, you are either a woman who can admit when you’re wrong or you’re married to one.

But don’t pretend there aren’t people like that and don’t pretend those of us that believe it are sexists.