When one person makes most of the choices regarding the wedding, a pattern for the marriage can be set up. In your marriage does one partner determine the marriage choices? Did one person determine where you would live? Or was it a joint decision? It may not be as big a decision as that. It may be in myriad little decisions, like what you do in your free time, what you watch on TV, or what movies you see.
Marriage is about give and take. Marriage is a blending together of two people with sometimes different tastes to make one cohesive unit. Mick’s and my taste is not always the same but we try and please each other. It means sometimes he will go see a soppy movie or go to a poetry reading because this is what I am interested in. It also means I will trail around a hardware store with him or go to watch an action movie because he wants to. Yes, he could go on his own but we like to do things together.
If one person is always making the choices in a marriage, what does that say about the marriage? How can it be a partnership?
When you have them and how many children, are things that need to be discussed and agreed upon. Yet how often have you heard a woman who wants a baby stops using whatever form of contraceptive they had been using to get pregnant assuming once the deed is done, her husband will come round to the idea. Some marriages have started out that way. Or there are those sometimes guys, but not always, who don’t real want a family but, acquiesce because it’s expected.
Another is, as Mary Ann pointed out, using your partner for sex when you want it without regard for them. It’s interesting though that in a new book out it is often the one with the low sex desire who controls the relationship of when and how often it happens.
In each case one person had made the decision for two without consideration of the other.
Related blogs
Using Sex As a Bargaining Tool
Intimacy and Desire in Marriage
Checklist Of Things To Be Discussed Before Marriage