Wife doesn't want to share office space

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I can't believe the folks who are defending the wife. I've been married 24 years. My husband lets me handle all the bills and he gets a weekly stipend. He is horrible with money and he knows it. I would never order a home renovation without his input that is beyond selfish and rude. It doesn't matter who is paying.

We have no idea what her side of this story is to know if there's anything to defend or not. For all we know, when he says "Before we could set up an office she transformed the space into a storage space for paper and miscellaneous furniture," it was really six months of her asking him to help her turn it into an office for them to share and him finding every excuse not to do it, so she gave up and just moved stuff in. And when he says she never consulted him about the renovations, it could have been another six months of her asking him to work with her on a plan for renovating the space that they would each chip in 50% on, him putting it off because he wanted to spend money on trips to Vegas with his buddies, so she finally gave up, did her own plan on her own dime, and now doesn't want him freeloading off her time and money. Both of these alternatives suggest a marriage in serious need of counseling, but also suggest that there's a potential alternative narrative here (that's no inconsistent with what OP posted as the "facts") where she's not the bad guy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a bit skeptical of OP's account, because there zero gray area in his account, and he's far too certain of the outrageousness of his wife's behavior for me to believe he's really lookng for a discussion of the fairness of what she did. So, OP, what are you really looking to get out of this thread?

OP here.

I am not looking for specific advice (e.g. use the guest bedroom as an office) I could easily figure that out myself. If you read my original post here is my question:

"If the roles were reversed I would have asked her if it would be ok for me to use the space as my personal office. I would not assume that she should stay in the basement. I also wouldn't assume that she should be the one to move into the basement if I want my own personal room.

Am I looking at this incorrectly? "

To me her behavior seems outrageous (although not really out of character for her). Hiring the contractors with consulting me was bad enough. Assuming I would stay in the basement worse still. Telling me there was nothing wrong with what she was doing because she paid for it(especially since I pay for the mortgage), left me almost speechless.

To me her behavior is outrageous. So much so I started to wonder if maybe I was missing something. Hence my original post.

But again, there's no gray area here, nowhere do you present some kind of sense of why you think you're missing something or why you've been tolerating this, none of the self-doubt that tends to come with someone just realizing their partner has been gaslighting them, etc. It feels like you've put out this ridiculously exaggerated version of what happened so you could go back to your wife and tell her even the internet thinks she's crazy to "win" some argument.

OP here. The reason why I thought I might be missing something is because I thought her behavior was really over the top. I just wanted to see what other people thought. I have no intention of mentioning this thread to her.

[Anonymous]

Yeah her behavior was controlling and outrageous. It might be time to combine your finances and change the dynamic in your relationship. Next time she says contractors will be in the house, you say doing what and how much?

You two are having some odd sort of power struggle that is not going to end with a winner. If you BOTH don't learn to compromise for the sake of the other, I think you'll be very unhappy with your marriage.