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Originally Posted by tracilicious
First of all, asking the question is just a courtesy. Like I'm making Michael feel like he has a choice on whether or not to do the dishes.
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I suppose it isn't fair, but it isn't uncommon for me to say something like "stop talking like a woman, just tell me what you want."
This also comes up when she wants to do something but rather than saying what she wants to do she asks me what I want to do in the hopes that I'll say what she wants to do. Because she doesn't want to sound bossy.
Just sound bossy. 95% of the time I'll be fine with it and the other 5% we'll talk about it and come to an amicable agreement.
There was a story on This American Life about a guy who's father was really weird and left the family when he was young and was looking for aliens and all that. Anyway, the father was shacked up with a new woman many years later and said they'd developed a way to avoid all arguments. Whenever they were debating options they'd each say "I feel X about that" where X was a number between 1 and 10. Whoever said the highest number got their way.
We've never really done it on anything important but since hearing that story we'll have a conversation like this:
"I want Japanese for dinner."
"Well, I'd prefer Mexican."
"I feel 4 about having Japanese for dinner."
"I feel 7."
And then we go have Mexican. It actually works pretty well but requires both sides to actually admit what they want and evaluate its relative importance.