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Took me a second. Can relate.
"Where do you want to eat?" "Anywhere is fine with me. You pick." "How about burgers." "No, I don't want burgers tonight." "How about..." "No. Not there." "Okay, you choose." "I don't want to choose."
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Not sure what went wrong or right in my marriage but I can't relate to these common tropes at all. Maybe it's a difference in culture (I'm not from the US), but my wife and I both actively work to find a consensus in any decision no matter how small.
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You're probably not in the boomer generation:
They have this 'I hate my wife' trope in their humor for some reason.
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Don't mind us X-gen over in the corner. Sometimes it's better to not be part of the disaster anyway.
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Gen X is just slightly less ancient boomers with occasional tattoos tbh
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Some of us actually give a shit about other people, just not enough of a shit to do anything about it, but we care...
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Shush
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I feel like you can track this some in early TV shows. Way back when, you had shows like I Love Lucy and Leave it to Beaver, featuring loving, largely functional families. Once this became an expected trope, shows like The Honeymooners and The Flintstones subverted that expectation, but became such a hit that they became the formula to emulate - so it became common to joke about marital strife.
Sometimes you'd get a show like The Addams Family, that would again subvert this new expectation; but they didn't start becoming the norm until much more recently.
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Or Socrates.
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Yeah I’ve never really understood the “my SPOUSE am I right?” bits. That’s your spouse. You ought to…work on that.
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Women in America (other countries too I’m sure) have been (and still are to some extent) treated like objects or property of a man. It’s barely been over 100 years (1910) since they finally earned their right to vote. It wasn’t until the 60s that no-fault divorce was allowed, as well as women being able to have their own bank accounts.
Even the Charleston Heston movie Soylent Green perpetuated the property stereotypes by calling all women in the movie “furniture”.
We’re still fighting some of these same battles today (no-fault divorce seems to be on the chopping block, and abortion is banned again).
So we “1st-world” Americans as a country still have a long way to go to bringing women (and other non-white male groups) to genuine equality.
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Don't forget that being a divorcee was a bad tag to have hung upon you.
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Like, "How dare you not submit to his every need, to the point he looked elsewhere and moved on!!!" Regardless of the facts in any situation. It had such a strong shame hold on society that you still hear of women lamenting being young divorcees
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Think you'll find 'Charleston Heston' was the dance number performed to, "Don't it Taste just like your Mammy's?", in the musical version of Soylent Green.
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Boomers are just at the (hopefully) tail end of a long tradition of bad marriages. No fault divorce has only been in the US since the mid 1970s, so a lot of boomer parents were kind of stuck with each other. Today, there's at least the possibility of parting amicably, before it all really turns to shit. The parents of boomers were a lot more likely to be coerced into early, or even arranged marriages by social and economic power structures. So boomers were brought up in environments where shitty marriages were common fodder for comedy.
By the time Gen-X & esp Millennials are born, women get a lot more autonomy, both parents frequently work and have active interests outside the home to temper home stresses, and it's much more common to break up bad marriages and try again.
It really is amazing how much better life can be if one is not locked into rigid social structures.
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Divorce was socially unacceptable, no matter the laws. That was a big deal.
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You married a man. /s
In all seriousness. I have a happy marriage. We're awesome at communication and never argue. But things get indescivie during take out. It just happens.
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Oh my wife and I argue a lot. Sometimes we scream at each other. But we never stop communicating.
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I think it's healthy to argue. Just don't go to sleep angry or let it fester. It's when you start arguing about one thing and end up on another topic when you gotta watch out.
Why did you switch topics? Why didn't you tell me X thing was bothering you?
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Sometimes going to sleep is the best thing for your mood. Learn how to sleep angry
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Exactly this. My wife and I work together, like the adults we are. Just be honest with each other.
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After my wife heard a similar complain and we guessed that what they want is us being able to figure out their taste and preference, she now says: "CHOOSE MERE MORTAL YOUR FATE, know my heart's desire wisely or perish"
Or something along those lines. She's a Ghostbuster's fan if you can tell.
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I wanna marry your wife.
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Seriously, is she single? Also, please don't tell my wife that I asked.
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I gave up playing this game.
"You hungry?
'Yes.'
"What do you want?"
'I don't know.'
"OK I'm craving burgers from X place. I'll order two burgers in 30 minutes unless you tell me you want something else."So far it's working well. Either she orders from where I want or somewhere close by.
'I'm feeling Chinese.' Baby you can get whatever you want. I'll hit two spots or switch my order.
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I’ve allayed liked that the idea that if you say no to a suggestion in this situation, it is now your turn to suggest something.
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It took a couple years to get my wife to be more assertive about this stuff. I'd just keep picking places I knew she hated until she'd make a decision.
Just the other day she turned it around on me. Asked me which of two options I wanted, I said whichever she feels like and she came back with, "No, I want to know what you want." So I laughed and gave her my preference.
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My wife and I always give each other 2-3 options and take turns narrowing it down. Same with movies: We start out with our Trakt list and take turns narrowing it down until we get something we both want to watch.
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Sounds like my wife.
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