I have always wondered how people feel in a relationship when one handles most of the decorating. Is it a collaborative effort, are their fights, does one just give in, does one go above the other?
I think each couple is obviously very different so I can only speak about myself and my Husband. For us, my husband is very supportive and we both gradually fell into our roles of him as the supporter and me as the lead when it comes to decorating. If he truly had it his way we would have cars as decorations, posters on the wall, and that is about it. Not my kind of home for a family. It worked great before I came along but now cars will not do, collectible or not. However with that said I decorated a lot with bright colors, reds, oranges, yellows, what I thought a romantic look. My husband hated it and we slowly figured out where our house style fit as a couple. I do come up with most of the decisions and ideas. But I honestly would never make a decision if he absolutely hated it. We had many discussions on the paint color of our walls. We usually tend to have different favorites and we weigh both colors with the rest of the room and go from there. Luckily he is truly a man that only really requires a comfy couch to sit on and a coffee table to put his feet on.
Some people how ever are on opposite ends of needs, style, and function. It either ends in fights, yelling, giving up or very maturely rock, paper, scissors I would guess. I think like anything in a relationship decorating has to be something you agree on to handle. Even if the agreement is one handles it and the other does not care. I know many men that willingly play video games in their pink and rose decorated living room because they really do not notice. I know others who as long as they have their “man cave” they are fine. You know those are the lucky ones, they get one whole room in their own house to do as they please. A whole room! Others, neither person cares. They have what they have and it works. The ones I know who fight about what couch to buy and go at it are the ones who ironically enough fight about lots of other things. The ones who passively say “fine, get what you want.” have a lot of passive aggressive tendency’s in their relationship. It usually all comes to blows in the form of a disagreement on the bedroom wall color.
My husband has said he loves our home, takes pride in the work we have done together and is thankful for me creating the space we have our memories and where our kids will grow up. I like that he lets me do those things. But I don’t know how it would work if he really, really wanted the cars on shelves in the living room and a glow in the dark poster on the wall. He had both those things when I met him at the ripe old age of 22. Luckily we both made some considerations and went about creating the look of OUR life together. But rock, paper, scissors is always there if needed.
