To feel annoyed with DH?

[daisydaresya]

Please tell me if iabu

My husband and I were bickering this morning and he said to me “you always want your own way and you’ve always got an opinion on everything.”

This has pissed me right off. I’m not mouthy or particularly bolshy - but I do speak my mind where I feel it’s needed.

I feel really aggrieved that he’s said I always get my own way as when it’s come to big life decisions we’ve always gone with what he wants. For example, I’m a practising catholic and he is atheist so when it came to getting married he said he would never get married in the Catholic Church so we married in a registry office. He said he’d never send our DDs to a catholic school so they’re at a non denominational school. We live in a large town next to a major UK city and when it came to moving house he would only live in certain areas so we’re living where he wanted to live.

I wouldn’t say I’m a pushover but I realise that there’s got to be compromise and a bit of give and take. I’m also not perfect btw but I definitely don’t get my own way and I’m pretty bloody angry that he said that. Its like a lightbulb moment where I’ve realised that HE has got his own way with the important decisions

I’m probably being unreasonable but I just feel an anger starting to slowly burn

I remember reading research that suggested that once a woman contributed 40% to a two-way conversation, she was regarded as "dominating" the conversation and not letting the man have a word in edgewise. I suspect the same applied in decision making.

Look it it his way. There is the "right" decision, which of course is the one that he has hit upon. So the only sensible way of deciding is to do the right thing (which always aligns with his view), so any decision which goes the other way is you perversely insisting on your view in the face of all logic. That's why he perceives you as insisting on your own way. And why "always having an opinion" is a criticism - there's the right understanding (which he will reach), and if you differ, yours is just "an opinion" (and wrong).

I suspect you need to speak up a lot more. If you fight only those decisions which are "show stoppers" as far as you're concerned, then you'll "win" a high proportion of them. And he will be completely unaware that the things which havd gone his way are you compromising - he'll think they're things where you've agreed with his point of view. If you fight things which are unimportant, then graciously give way, he won't be able to argue you always get your own way.

This is like when men estimate women as doing the majority of the speaking when they’re in fact speaking less than the men.

The issue isn’t that OP always wants her own way, it’s that she challenges his decisions.

And I agree that sometimes you don’t notice it at first and then gradually, like OP, you come to realise that there’s an inequity going on.

OP, fo you think if you brought this up he wouldn’t hear you out? It sounds as though you do and that’s a big problem.

My FIL often says that MIL always has to be right. In fact, he is very self centred an she nearly always humours him and gives him his own way. Occasionally, she digs her heels in over some issues that she feels too important to compromise on and that is why he claims she always 'has to be right. I wonder if your DH is like this and is only focussing on the exceptional time that you do not give into him and not counting all the important issues he has got his own way on without much of a fight.

I'm very opinionated and I just asked DP if he minded.

"God, no", he said. "I'd have to think up my own opinions if you didn't have any."

Cheeky fucker.

Yes I reckon he doesn't even notice when he gets his own way. He only notices when you get yours.

And dear God, how could anyone bear to be with someone wishy washy enough not to have any opinions??