I work best in a collegial atmosphere, where each person on the team works with the others in a give-and-take environment. I don't work at all well when someone assumes the persona of manager or boss and decides to run the show. If that person is in fact authorized to hand down decisions, fine, I have learned to deal with that, but for someone who assumes the mantle just because he is older or male or rich or is husband (to my wife), I have little tolerance.

This conflict is at the root of my problems with N. He assumes that he is pater familias and that he know what is best for "us". He has said so, in just those words, as if I were some ingenue just arriving on the stage of life and unschooled in worldly things.

It's difficult for me to bite my tongue and let him build his castle of fantasy, because eventually it comes to the point where he has constructed a world wherein he is the center of "us" and I perform all tasks in gladness that I am allowed to be of service to the master of the house.

When he says he: doesn't want to lose me, that translates to: he doesn't want to lose my constant attendance and respectful attention. He doesn't want to lose control of me and when it happens, he feels rejected.

Right now, the construct he is building (poor guy) is one where he will come home, I will retire, and he will be tended night and day by the dutiful loving wife. I don't want to let the structure get built up, because let it grow and pretty soon it seems like a done deal (at least in his mind) and I find myself skittering hither and yon, doing his bidding. Again.

So I vigilantly man (woman) the boundaries, as gently as I can keeping it real, without puncturing his ego entirely. I'd be better off without him, but I haven't the heart to leave him.