If I think I’m really right about something that really matters, then I’ll say. An awful lot of the time, it’s not something that matters, and it’s not worth fighting about.
I also think that my wife gives me my way in unspoken ways a lot of the time, even though I know she thinks I’m wrong.
Although it’s exaggerated for satirical effect, the meme is true that the key to a peaceful relationship is being willing to surrender on things which are more important to the other person than they are to you, even if you think the other person is wrong.
I think this is a lesson that women understand intuitively, while men have to be taught it. That’s why it seems to men like they’re letting their wives be right all the time, even though the truth is that the wives are letting them be right just as often, they’re just more subtle about it.
I’m also not really down with the insinuation that me choosing not to fight with my wife about things which I do not think are important somehow makes my wife an unreasonable person. She isn’t like that. She’s more than happy to discuss and listen, but I would rather just skip it, let her have whatever it is, and get back to watching the game.
“Wife is always right” is a cartoon characterization of what people will use to describe their relationships, mostly for the sake of amusement, as I’m sure the OP of the link you used was doing. IRL men will often defer to women on a number of typically female centric social choice issues. It’s not that they actively oppose the wife on these issues, it’s simply not important enough to take the mental effort to debate the pros and cons, and will simply go along with what their wives want.
However, and it’s a big “however”, if the wife has a history of making really fucked up or poorly thought out decisions this “go along” dynamic will often end pretty quickly. A lot of the “wife is right” meme generally depends on how “right” the wife is over time. If a husband can’t trust the wife’s decsions then every little thing has to be evaluated, and honestly, that’s just exhausting. Same goes for women relying on a husband to make decisions that wives often leave to husbands.
Tolerance goes a long way in a marriage but at the end of the day for both men and women if you are married to a congenital fuck up it’s like you have another child to care for, and that’s wearing. Relying on someone to take care of something and actually having it taken care of with minimal fuss is an amazing feeling. Having to micro-manage an incompetent spouse is a not so amazing feeling.
The way I understand the dynamic, when couples argue about who is ‘right’, rarely is it about a resolving a straightforward question of objective reality. Thus, acquiescence isn’t really a lie. The man or woman may stand their ground on a factually weak position due to some other subtext at play. With men it’s about making sure they aren’t losing control… sometimes when you acquiesce too much, it feels like you’re eroding future possiblities of getting your way when you feel like it. With women, the subtext centers around whether their ideas, preferences, and needs are valued. The man says “no, that won’t work”, and what she hears is “I don’t care what you want.”
My strategy as a man is to give in on nearly every trivial matter. When it comes to the big stuff, rather than arguing about whether strategy A or B is better, first I make sure I understand and restate her concerns before we go into details. If I feel strongly that she’s wrong, I make sure she knows it’s not because her ideas aren’t important. If it’s something I want just because I really really want it, then I say that instead of trying to pose an obviously self-serving factual argument. Women can easily detect that, and it’s insulting.
Well, that’s the goal anyways. I think we’re batting 50% on agreement which I think is pretty good.
I think the axiom is correct for a certain type of person, but utter, utter horseshit for anyone who isn’t a total asshole.
Now, I’m not saying that my husband never says “yeah, whatever” just to shut me up when I’m being muleheaded. I’m sure he does from time to time; I’m human, and I have my cranky and inflexible days just like everybody else. But the operative phrase here is “just like everybody else.” And I do mean everybody–men, women, children, and housepets included. There are times when I say “yeah, whatever” to my husband just to shut him up when he’s being muleheaded. I frequently say it to my (male) boss, to my dad, to my grandfather, to the old codger across the street who wants to instruct me in the fine art of lawn care. Painting it as a purely or even primarily female failing is lacking in awareness at best and deliberate intellectual dishonesty at worst.
Why does the meme live on? Well, because the kind of guy who perpetuates it will cling to it in the face of any and all evidence that it’s not true. You show him a woman who can and does apologize, and she’s obviously an outlier. All such women you show him are statistical outliers, no matter how many of them there are, because he’s right, goddammit. People realize that there is nothing to be said or done that will convince this guy he’s wrong–they just shrug and say “yeah, whatever” to shut him up and have some peace.
I skimmed a few of the posts, so my apologies if any of this is a repeat.
I’ve usually seen this meme expressed (mostly) facetiously. I’ve occassionally suggested it myself, tongue-in-cheek, in situations where I felt the complaining man was probably in the wrong anyway (the thread linked in the OP does not fit the criterion for me). I probably could have given a better piece of advice in those situations.
Of the times IRL that I’ve seen people use it, or used it myself, with even a teensy bit of seriousnees to it, it seemed to include a component of face-saving for the man amongst his peers. Sort of an “Of course I’m never wrong, har har, but her precious ego can’t handle that, so I do the gentlemanly thing and pretend she’s right.”
I’m surprised that any Doper would offer such advice without intending at least some irony or facetiousness, but I’m naive like that.
It’s treating a wife like a child who can’t be reasoned with. Stereotypes exist for a reason and can be culturally reinforced over generations. That does not mean that they would exist if they weren’t constantly reinforced through the continued application of bigoted behavior.
That’s a bit of strong invective there, and totally wrong. Maybe it’s right in your experience, but it’s patently false and morally offensive in my experience.
Former friends: The wife was one of those type of people, limited neither to males or females, who was a bull-headed know-it-all, arrogant to the core and in her mind ALWAYS RIGHT. If she had an opinion about anything, and she almost always did, it was impossible to hold a different opinion around her without an incredible amount of disdain on her part. Her husband was incredibly pussy-whipped. They’d occasionally butt heads, but if he didn’t give in very quickly, she not only would make his life incredibly miserable, but was quite open (and proud!) with everyone that this was the way it worked.
I can only point straight at that woman for a prime example of this axium.
Another couple I knew, the wife wasn’t near as bad, but if she wanted or thought something ardently enough, she took it as a personal insult and threat to their relationship if her husband didn’t go along with her or believe the same thing.
My own ex-wife was mentally unstable and it would completely unbalance her if she decided something without telling me and I would then oppose it. I suppose I could have given in much of the time to make her happy, but unfortunately, far too much of her “logic” was based on fantasy and paranoia and thus was not even slightly grounded in reality. Going along to get along was going along with madness.
I think marital squabbles should be sorted out by contests. If you have nerves of steel, a staredown. Good biceps, arm wrestle. A good eye, crossbows like Robin Hood. The winner’s arrow will split the shaft of the other bullseye. Then you take a video and start discussing how to get it viral, and forget what you were arguing about.
I remember reading one of those “men are from mars” style books, it claimed (from memory) that one of the biggest differences between men and women in the workplace is that men tend to make up their minds faster, but are also more willing to change it when new facts come to light.
The same book also claimed that women are more emotionally vested in their arguments - meaning to say that if you criticise her facts, cite or reasoning they see it as criticisms of themselves - whereby men are more able to separate person and argument.
I would suspect that this feeds into the meme of “women not liking to admit they’re wrong”. From my own personal experience with my wife, I know that if I try to “prove” her wrong, I am being a bastard and mean to her.
Often, I also find that she will put forward arguments of opinion stated as facts. Things that I can’t ever “disprove” and if I even try, my life becomes miserable - so its easier just to go along with her - particularly when it doesn’t really matter (as in whether we have beef or chicken for dinner) or if she is the one being affected.
At the end of the day - I think that there is at least an element of truth to the assertion, and that what it means to guys is that you have to pick your battles and not sweat the small shit.
Why on earth would you assume I was implying that the person who didn’t insist on being right about everything all the time was the asshole, rather than the person who is only bearable when everything goes her way? That’s insanity.
was saying that… if you believed the axium was true, you were an asshole.
Based also on things like
Personally, I think there are a couple of things that reinforce the axium. Those being;
and that some women will admittedly (and sometimes willfully and proudly) make their man’s life hell over difference of opinion or a failure to acquiesce, where you don’t commonly see the same kind of emotional abuse out of men.
I do think that it isn’t the same to say “always, always back up your wife against other people (ok, 99% of the time)” as “always say yes to your wife.” I expect wifes to back up their men in front of third parties as well; I expect the second one from neither spouse. My mother is always getting angry when Middlebro backs up his wife “against” either of their mothers, I’m always asking her whether Dad ever refrained from backing her - all she can answer is “harrumph!”, and I can certify that she backed him up so much I thought they were like an inverted hydra, one head with two bodies (adult age and his death have finally revealed which parts of the hydra belonged to whom).
In the example directly above my post, the child counts as a third party, but it is important for her to know that her parents weren’t born being in agreement and it is also important that Dio and his wife be able to discuss the issue calmly without the child present. Whether Dio’s wife should get her head inserted into a bucket of cold water, I already expressed in his original thread.
It seems to me that there are two axioms here, one 99% correct and one extremely incorrect.
The 1% is in cases when your spouse’s being wrong can have very bad consequences; also, there is a difference between backing them and never giving your own opinion. A situation when the couple is using friends or family as a sounding board or think-tank in a civilized manner (and where everybody is pretty much thinking out loud) is totally different from one where someone has just told your spouse “you’re a bloody ass;” in the first one people should disagree until they reach an agreement, in the second one there’s nothing to disagree about.
In the interest of balance, is anyone familiar with a couple where the guy is the one behaving like the woman is behaving above? Of course not all women are like the above, but most people I know who are like the above are women.
My SiL’s parents: he was Always Right, she quietly did whatever she felt like doing inasmuch as she could get away with it. He’s now dead (good riddance), but she behaves the same way with everybody; you never know whether she agrees with you or not - and sometimes the way you find out is when she does the exact opposite of what you wanted.
Several other couples where the husband is in Lowly Authority Positions (foreman, cop like the one above, sergeant and crawling up slowly).
One of the couples in my parents’ old Couples Group (Teams of Our Lady); they’re farmers.
SiL’s brother is headed the same way; when he met his (now ex) girlfriend of several years, she was the head window dresser for a Spanish toymaker, now she works as an interior decorator for Ikea; he’d constantly demean her taste and anybody asking her for home decorating advice. He’ll tell me (a chemical engineer) that I don’t know anything about chemistry, his sister (a doctor) that she doesn’t know anything about pharmacology, Middlebro that he doesn’t know anything about construction and Lilbro that it’s not possible for Navarra to have a different tax structure than the rest of Spain. I’ll leave it to the reader to guess my brothers’ professions
I can’t answer the actual questions, but I can give my opinion on the meme.
It unsettles me. Not because I shouldn’t always have to be right. That’s obvious. What I hate is the idea that I’ve got to lie to pull it off.
I actually wonder if this perception (that women think they are always right) is one of the reasons there’s so much misogyny in Fundamentalist marriage. The guy knows that he’ll go to Hell if he lies, so he can never give in to his wife as stated above. Ergo, he has to make sure he marries someone who is submissive enough not to challenge him, so he’d have to lie to make the marriage work.
I, for one, hope it is possible to have a marital relationship without the lying. Not just because I’m ethically opposed to it, but because I am a really, really bad liar.
Do you think the above axiom for happy marriages is correct? (Are you male or female?)
Not at all.
If you always acquiesce on everything you will begin to resent the other person. That doesn’t make a happy marriage.
Also, people who tend to insist on being always right need to have someone stand up to them, or their personality will run away with them. The other partner does their spouse a disservice by always nodding and agreeing, because they aren’t helping their spouse to be a better person, or a happier person.
I apologise far more than my husband, to the point where he dislikes it when I apologise. I admit, sometimes I apologise simply because the issue is of no importance to me, and to admit fault cuts it off before it becomes a much larger issue. However, sometimes I am truly sorry and definitely see that I’m in the wrong. On the flip side, I think he only apologises to me when he really is sorry.
That said, if I really think he’s wrong I’ll tell him, and he will certainly tell me. Google is a really good thing in those situations.
If the axiom is correct is there a way to interpret it and not have women come out in a bad light?
If the axiom is incorrect, why has it survived for so long?
I think it’s survived mostly as a joke and a cultural meme. You see it in sitcoms and commercials, where the woman is so smart and just railroads over the husband. In real life I’ve seen it in a couple of occasions and that’s just because the woman is kind of a terror and the husband is trying to dodge her more crazy side. That doesn’t mean I haven’t seen that situation in reverse.
