“Alice is mad at Wayne,” said my wife as we were driving to work together yesterday.

“Oh?  What did he do to make her mad?” I asked.  Alice and Wayne are friends of ours.

“He told her that it must be nice to go out with her friends for lunch while he works to pay for it all.”

“Was he serious or joking?” I said.

“Joking, but in a mean way.  He’s always making little digs at her like that.” my wife replied.

“Did he say it in front of her friends?”

“Yes.  She wrote him an email telling him how much it hurt her,” my wife responded.  “I told her to send him the article on how much it would cost to replace a stay at home mom with private services.”

“It sounds like what he is really trying to say is they need to sit down and work out a budget and agree on how their resources should be allocated,” I said in my most reasonable lawyer voice.  I was trying to find some middle ground to stand on.

“No!” said my wife.  “He calls it his money, but it is really their money.  She gave up a successful career for him.”

“Perhaps he is just using the wrong words to express himself,” I answered.  “What he means is he earns the money that belongs to both of them and he would like to share in the decision of how it is spent.”

“She doesn’t spend any money!” exclaimed my wife.

I told her, “But you just said she went out to lunch with her friends.  Maybe he would like that money  to go into their pension plan.”

‘Their pension plan is fully funded.  He makes lots of money and she spends very little of it,” my wife explained.

“Well, your view is that he’s the bad guy, but I see both sides of it.”

Readers, what do you think?