Everything I Say, She Says the Opposite

Help, my wife doesn’t respect me!

Written with Zivia Reischer

Rabbi Shafier,

Thank you for your excellent column.

I hope you can help me. I feel like there’s a weird dynamic between me and my wife. I’m not sure when it started, but I find that everything I say, she says the opposite. Any idea I have, she finds something wrong with it. This happens with little things and also with important things.

For example, she wanted to have the dining room painted. I came home from work and there were four paint swatches taped to the wall in different shades of gray. I told her I thought we could rule out the first two, one was too dark and one was too blue. She completely disagreed — it’s not too dark, it adds drama, we don’t always have to be so boring, the other one is not blue at all, how can you even say that.

So then I said, okay, you’re right, they’re all in the same color family, I’m fine with whatever you choose. But she didn’t like that either, she said they’re totally different colors, they’re not at all similar, and they do nothing for the room.

The crazy part was that later her sister came over to see the choices and said, “They all look the same to me.” And my wife totally agreed with her!