He gets really sad and jaded when he talks about that decision.
I put this real-life story in contrast, just to prove that it's not just about "Always listen to your wife, she is always reasonable". For the trivial stuff like putting away your shoes or your socks, fine. But some decisions make a career and determine the future success of your offspring.
My father gave me one specific piece of advice that stuck with me through the entirety of the time I can remember, and it also helped me out quite a lot in life. The advice wasn't directly related to marriage or anything like that, it was about making major decisions in general. I didn't truly understand what it meant at the time, but once I realized it, it hit me like a truck and put a lot of things in perspective.
He said "Always listen to everyone's opinions, but always make your own decision."
Being a teenager at the time, I misinterpreted it as "listen to what everyone else says and then do your own different thing." A very typical non-conformist teenager take. But much later on, I realized that it meant something entirely different.
What he actually meant: "You should consider others' opinions when making a major decision, as it can let you make a better and more informed one. If you picked a decision that aligned with what someone else advised, that's absolutely fine. But, in the end, you own that decision and the consequences. You cannot hide behind a 'so and so advised that, which is why I made it' excuse. You are responsible for it, and you cannot blame people who provided their perspective for the resulting outcome."
Thinking about this piece of advice when making major life decisions helps me a lot. Both with pulling the trigger on it in a more informed way and accepting the eventual outcome.
The advice is good but is lacking. It should have been
"Always listen to your wife, she is always reasonable. But in the end, you have to make the decision yourself and take responsibility for it".
I remember reading about this in David Deida's The Way of the Superior Man.
Oh please. The writing was on the wall. If he's playing the "climb the corporate ladder" game nobody should surprised when he draws the "manage the Mongolian division" card. Expecting him to give that up when climbing the corporate ladder is the life he's chosen is somewhere on the spectrum from foolish to selfish.
Likewise if your boyfriend is mechanically inclined don't wake up one day complaining about the fleet of project cars and the heavy equipment that are cluttering up your property. You knew that was the life you were signing up for looked like.
There's a reason literally every culture has a litany of proverbs for women about not trying to change their men (and there's similiar but different proverbs for men).
