agonyaunt | Dear Prudence: Help, I Married a Horse Person

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Dear Prudence: Help, I Married a Horse Person

Q. Living in a horse girl’s dorm room:

My wife was a nationally ranked equestrian when she was growing up, and rode competitively for her college team. We first started dating in college. At that time, her dorm room was covered in horse paraphernalia—photos, old riding awards, trinkets from competitions, horse-themed calendars, you name it. I never really paid much attention to it because I’m not a decorations guy and honestly didn’t care about the aesthetics of her dorm room. However, now that we’ve moved into our first real home together, my wife is starting to turn this into a horse home! There is horse-related stuff EVERYWHERE. It’s like someone’s grandma’s horse-themed attic threw up in here.

I’ve tried to gently bring it up but since I don’t really have decorative “taste” and didn’t contribute any of my own decorations, it’s not like I can suggest hanging up some of my stuff too. My wife injured herself severely in a horse accident during her senior year and hasn’t ridden since then. She gets incredibly emotional if I even suggest leaving a painting or two off the wall and perhaps putting them into storage. Prudie, I don’t need an Instagram-worthy home, just one that looks like adults live here. I don’t hang up paintings of sports teams I love or my succulent tools! I don’t understand why my wife is so attached to all this stuff and I can’t shake the feeling that I’m a grown man living in a horse girl’s dorm room. I feel like a jerk for complaining because she’s the one who invested time and money into decorating, and as I said, I have no great ideas … I just don’t like the way it is now. What should I do?

A: For starters, if you want to have this conversation (again) with your wife, I’m afraid you’re going to have to come up with some ideas for how you’d like to decorate your home. They don’t have to be great, but they do have to exist, and if you can’t think of anything offhand, there’s an entire industry of “interior design suggestions” just waiting to be explored. That’s not to say you can’t approach her unless you’ve spent 50 hours designing a look book first, but do a little research, see what you like, and bring a few suggestions to the table.

I’d also encourage you to focus on what you can reasonably ask of a partner (“I want a 50 percent reduction in horse decor, and I think it’s important to keep talking about this even if you feel upset” is a perfectly achievable discussion) rather than attempt to psychoanalyze said partner (“I want a 50 percent reduction in horse decor, and I think you’re trapped in a state of arrested development because you were thrown off a horse your senior year of college. What do you think? Can you meet my terms, and do you agree that you’re psychologically frozen in time?” is not). You can be “gentle” without abandoning the topic just because your partner gets upset. Acknowledge that this is emotional for her, demonstrate patience and compassion if she starts crying, take a break if things get too heated—but don’t just back off because she gets upset.

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So LW 1) has no actual decorating ideas 2) has a vague concept that the house should like "adults live here" instead of "a horse girl", 3) knows his wife's history with horses and yet doesn't "understand why my wife is so attached to all this stuff", and so... wants to talk his wife into having other ideas and redecorating the house according to his personal taste which he hasn't even described, expressed, or presented examples of.

He's been telling his wife that she should both get rid of something that defined her life for years AND psychically divine his wishes.

If I were her would cry too.

If LW had distinct decor he wanted to put up, particular non-Dogs Playing Poker paintings and the like, or ideas for The Den is a Horse Room, the Dining Room is About Regattas, I'd be more sympathetic to him. If LW could POSSIBLY bother to spend some time thinking about what his wife must be thinking rather than his vague appeal to undefined authority idea of a house that "looks like adults live here", I'd be more sympathetic to him still. As it is, I think Prudie should have told him to THINK and should have made more hay out of the fact that he needs to provide concrete ideas. And maybe should have mentioned he should have a little empathy for his wife.

Would I want to live in a house covered with horse paraphernalia? No. Would I if I truly loved someone to whom horses were very important? It's not like it would kill me. And if I wanted something different I'd at least provide ideas and a plan (and financing). Sheesh.

Edited 2022-08-31 16:06 (UTC)

I love how the only even sideways mention of the emotional side of losing something that you loved and defined you for all of your early years is a brief offhand comment by LW and a snide parenthetical by Prudie. I'm sure it's not relevant.

Becoming an adult and being in charge of your own space is a big thing, LW. You're going to have to put some time into thinking about how you want your space to look. Poke around the internet for a bit. Get a pinterest account.

I define "a place that looks like adults live here" (using the living room as an example" as 50% of the furniture isn't the absolutely cheapest thing we could get to fill the need, only two visible video game consoles at a time, and 3 or fewer Lego sets or Transformers on display. The art on the walls of the living room is nice art I inherited.

On the other hand our house has a long hallway I call "fanart hallway" because we've got a lot of fan art purchased at cons and online that we want to have on display. Fanart hallway is awesome and one of my favorite spaces in the house.

Think about what an "adult space" looks like, LW, and then bring those ideas to your spouse. I leave you with a link to a relevant xkcd comic. https://xkcd.com/150/

P.S. Horses were and are a significant part of your spouse's life. Perhaps the solution is getting spouse's winner's ribbons put into a nice shadow box rather than thumb-tacked to the wall? Changing how things are displayed may change your opinion.

I think I fail your definition of adults live here, lol. We have a lot of really nice furniture, but there are also five or six game consoles by each TV.

So we have a giant sideboard thing we use as a TV stand and there are like six consoles that live inside it. Plus games and everything for Lego Dimensions. I married a gamer and knew what I was getting into. It's just the little retro ones that live on top.

Plus? You get to define what your own space looks like. If having a bunch of consoles around sparks joy, do it.

edit: I mostly picked the living room as the example because both the SU and I have some judgy relatives and it's the room we've got set aside for them to see. So my Aunt who gossips about everyone behind their back can come over briefly and my mother (whom I like) isn't subjected to a tirade about how "immature" her almost 40 kid is.

Edited 2022-08-31 22:15 (UTC)

Yeah, that makes sense (we have one of those half-width IKEA bookshelves that a bunch of black consoles live in so it's mostly an endless pit of darkness except when cat eyes stare back and Melly get off the Playstation!)

I have never understood why people can't keep that sort of opinion to themselves. My mother (whom I also like) once had to explain to my grandmother's housemate (whom I do not) that "these days the youth* don't play cards and go to a play like we used to, they watch television together" (when said housemate was on a rant about why do I need a new TV. I would point out that her house has the same number of inhabitants as mine and mine has half the number of televisions, but. logic doesn't work on her.)

* Also almost 40, here :)

If he loves his wife, I think he should learn to like horses. He could also, idk, look around for some interesting woodcuts and prints of succulents, since he likes those. Go to local open studios and look for affordable landscapes. Get a dog and embrace the country house look completely.

It's a stretch but I wonder whether he, as he is admittedly indifferent to decoration, has been hearing from his buddies on how his house looks like a horse girl dorm.

Might have been a comment on the zoom background too. I had a comment about my curtains that way - very subtle Mario coin curtains (block print metallic gold paint on fabric), but since they were pretty subtle it was more of a 'hey, nice touch' than 'oh, you're a nerd'.

One thing I've noticed on AITA is that anyone who says they "gently" explained something (or similar adverbs) is totally the asshole.

Absolutely.

Another AITA staple is the OP who is in a long-term partnership or marriage, seemingly without ever noticing an interest that makes up a major part of their partner's life, and then is shocked, shocked, that their partner retains that interest while in the relationship. I always come away from those posts wondering how you could get that deep into a relationship without apparently caring about your partner as a person.

I mean, I'm not partnered but I have family and friends - they have interests that I don't share but I know about them and we talk about them. I don't personally care about mixed-media art but my Mom does a lot of it, so I ask what she's working on and I look at her pieces and talk to her about them. She doesn't care about ttrpgs but she knows that I do, so she listens to me talk about my games and gives me dice for my birthday. Because we care about each other, which means that we know each other.

I'm not saying that there's not room for compromise in their decor (though my dude definitely needs to come up with alternatives that aren't "I don't want what you like but I still want you to do all the work") but man, the clear disregard for her interests in this letter is astounding to me. "Oh, she had horse stuff all over and it was clearly a big part of her life but it wasn't important to me so I didn't notice until it became an inconvenience." Bet you a dollar she knows all about his hobbies, though.

Edited (fixing html tags) 2022-08-31 20:41 (UTC)

I've seen in various spaces the idea floated that a lot of heterosexual couples do not actually have anything in common except sex and the bits of their lives when they're with each other. I can't speak to the veracity of this: my own experiences of het couples is that they're both a unit and individuals who do their own thing on occasion, and they know about the others' hobbies, etc., and can comment on them/accomodate them, even if it's not their personal thing.

But I think about that idea from time to time when people who are a pair seem not to know very much about each other, or when someone (usually a female) say that their (usually male) partner doesn't know anything about her hobby or life interest...

Yep. Spouse doesn't know details about yarny crafts, but he does know I'm interested in fibercrafts (and genealogy, and improv, and....), and he respect sthat I'm into these things even if he doesn't share those interests or get them. He doesn't have to know anything about knitting to understand that I enjoy it and to support my spending time and money on it; I don't have to be able to tell a 1971 Dart from a 1959 Chevy to be aware that Spouse is interested in cars and to support his Rock Auto habit. (He's the one who commented that his stash takes up more space than mine.)

Plus, I don't get people who don't like seeing what their sweeties are good at. I could care less about cars except when my SO is talking about cars because he knows so much and he enjoys the subject, so it comes alive for me . I enjoy seeing him in his element. It weirds me out that people can want to spend their lives with someone and have never seen that, let alone not wanting to see it.

(He's the one who commented that his stash takes up more space than mine.)

That sounds like a challenge to me. ;)

On the other hand, much of his stash can be stored in non-temperature-controlled spaces without it being damaged or eaten by bugs ;-). But if I decide to get into weaving when the kids are grown, I figure I totally have enough cred built up to support a 45-inch floor loom.

Word.

I think it's reasonable to ask for the horse decor to be limited to one or two rooms,

but to try to get rid of it altogether is selfish/unkind/cruel

When you cohabit with someone, I think it's important that you both have opportunities to make the space feel like your own, so I think there is the seed of a legitimate concern in what LW is saying. I don't think it is good to have the entire house be a shrine to the life and interests of one partner, to the total exclusion of the other.

That said, I think LW is approaching the issue the wrong way, and the advice here doesn't go far enough. I agree that it's not appropriate for LW to psychoanalyze why his wife is so attached to her horse stuff, but I would encourage him to realize that it IS appropriate for him to ask himself why it bothers him and what his goal is in changing it.

If it bothers him that he's being left out and there's no space to express his aesthetic (once he figures out what his aesthetic is), he would probably get a lot more traction telling her that directly than trying to pick away at one horse painting at a time. "I want more of this" often goes down a lot easier than "I want less of that", and is less likely to be interpreted as an attack. But if it's really about LW feeling like his wife is stuck in the past and being childish, then the decor is just a symptom of a bigger problem of him not respecting her, not empathizing with her, and not seeing her as his equal in maturity. That's not a problem that can be fixed by any amount of redecorating.

Dude is being an asshole.

It is perfectly okay to want your shared home to reflect both of you and not just one person. However, it's not terribly helpful to say "I don't know what I want, I just know it's not this". Spend some time looking at Pinterest and figure out your own taste, or negotiate for open-to-company areas to remain undecorated until you and your spouse find art you both like.

It may be more difficult if LW is someone like my spouse, who has zero interest in decoration and if anything would prefer it if our house had plain white walls and no art. Even then, though, "I prefer a minimalist aesthetic" or "I really don't like a space that looks 'decorated'" is a legit preference to raise and better than "I don't care as long as it's not a horse".

I also note that LW says "she's the one who invested time and money into decorating". Where was LW during these decisions? Was he going "sure, whatever you like" and turning back to his phone? Or did she present it as a fait accompli? Are LW and his wife working from the assumption that decorating the home is both the woman's task and her right?

But for me, what makes LW an asshole is his contempt for something that defined his wife's life for years, that she was EXTREMELY skilled in, and that she's now lost and is still grieving. And his reaction is "Get over this childish stuff and stop being a crybaby and stop embarrassing me with who you are," not "This really sucks that you've lost this, but it's important to me that the home feel like our home and not solely your home; can we balance your horse-themed items with something that reflects my interests?"

And his reaction is "Get over this childish stuff and stop being a crybaby and stop embarrassing me with who you are," not "This really sucks that you've lost this, but it's important to me that the home feel like our home and not solely your home; can we balance your horse-themed items with something that reflects my interests?"

This. This is why I'm angry with LW and not just annoyed with him. He's so utterly dismissive of his wife's personal history -- did he just set out to acquire a Female Shaped Person to fit into his Idea of an Adult Life and is now upset with her for being an actual individual, or what?

That's my gut reaction, too. She was very upfront about this and yet he seems perplexed she didn't ripen into some vague someone else.

Perhaps ponyplay; he can be the object instead, and she gets to ride him into the sunset?

a Female Shaped Person to fit into his Idea of an Adult Life

BTW I love this phrase. Hate the concept it describes, but great way to put it!

THIS THIS THIS.

LW felt like having a wife was an adult thing to do but never expected them to be .... an actual person with their own wants desires and feelings!!!

Your last paragraph is it, completely. It ends up reading as "bawwwwww she has interests that are not CATERING TO ME."

I would expect someone who cared about a sport to the extent that they continued to compete in college (especially one with as high a barrier to entry as equestrian competition) to want to keep their medals and such on display. I would likewise expect such a person to keep photographs and posters. This is materially different than an average "horse girl" phase (mine was indulged more than most, in that I had riding lessons for years) and should be treated as something important to her. That he does not see that or care about it tells me he does not see or care about her.

Exactly. If I were married to someone who had been a champion tennis player in high school and college but who had to give up their dream of further progress due to a major injury, while I wouldn't want the house to be All Tennis All The Time, I'd absolutely want them to have space (including some space in public areas of the house) for their trophies and memorabilia, good photos of tennis players in action, etc. If they say "nope, that part of my life's over for good, I don't want to see this stuff", then we box it up in the closet. Otherwise, we make sure we both have space for us.

Yeah this guy honestly just reeks of "you have interests that Aren't Me" and I am inclined to knife him in the kidneys for it.

There is this absolutely ridiculous show "married at first sight" that I've sometimes seen with my mother when we just wanted to watch something ridiculous.

And one episode, one of the newlyweds was from Texas, and they showed the new spouse walking through the house, complete with Psycho strings, shocked that there were three (three!) Texas-themed decorations on the walls. He declared her obsessed with Texas.

I about died laughing. My dad was a Texan expat, and a mere three items is positively restrained. Our house had multiple Texas flags, a Texas barbed wire on the wall, a Lone Star barbed wire on the wall, bluebell prints, a Texas candy dish, multiple horns from longhorns... well, the list goes on.

Anyway, all this prelude is to say: I'm gonna need to see some pictures before I agree that the horse decor is excessive. It might just be that LW doesn't have any perspective.

Er, divided by a common language question: what is 'Texas barbed wire', please? In my British dialect, barbed wire is a kind of metal fence designed to mildly injure people who try to climb over it, I can't picture how that could be a home decoration.

Picture that same barbed wire folded and bent into the shape of the state of Texas and you've got it. There's also one folded and bent into the shape of a Lone Star, aka "a star". Each of them was about the size of a plate, I guess, and they hung on the wall.

My grandmother picked them up for him when she happened to make an impromptu trip to the barbed wire store.

Wow. Thanks so much for clarifying, I learned a new thing.

It all seemed so normal when I was a child...!

I was more familiar with the Texas flag than with the American flag, I can tell you that. And I doubt anybody, ever, has owned a NYS flag!

And to be clear, every bit of this sounds as strange to most people as it does to you. Most people aren't from Texas.

Ah, a quick google tells me that people still make and sell this stuff. It looked a bit like this: https://www.etsy.com/listing/637211823/barbed-wire-texas?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=texas+barbed+wire&ref=sr_gallery-1-5&frs=1

If I walked into a house and I saw that on the wall I would be successfully intimidated.

Not if you'd met my father first, unless you were very scared by Santa as a small child in which case... maybe. (Little kids used to follow him in the street. I actually remember at least one child asking "Papa Natale" what he was getting.)

It wasn't really that big, anyway. Smaller than my current computer monitor, I think.

At any rate, my point is that this is just how Texan expats do it and "excessive" is in the eye of the beholder.

OKay, that is pretty adorable, that your dad was one of Santa's doppelgangers.

This guy would be funny if I didn't feel bad for his wife. I mean, all questions of whether he's being an asshole aside, how could anyone think "I don't like this stuff that you clearly feel a strong preference for, but I want YOU to be 100% responsible for coming up with alternative suggestions that I would like while I don't do any of the work!" was going to be a winning strategy? She's not an interior designer. It's not her job to play a guessing game to come up with something visually pleasing to someone who claims to have no preferences and can't articulate anything, dude! The BARE MINIMUM you have to do if you want to replace something is SUGGEST SOMETHING ELSE! ...Ideally without insulting the other person if you want them to agree to your suggestions? What a clown.

How can their home simultaneously look like "someone’s grandma’s horse-themed attic" and like adults don't live there? Surely grandmas are adults?

I can generally picture this house because it mostly matches my mother's house. She has horse paintings and horse sketches framed and on the wall, a few horse statuettes as knickknacks, a horse lamp in a bedroom, and so on. To me, a horse house is just my mom's house.

Either this guy needs to step up and participate in the decorating process or he needs to tone down his discomfort with his wife's sense of style.

WHAT IS THIS I CAN'T EVEN.

No, really. He says in one sentence that it looks like something someone's grandmother would do and then that it's like living in a young person's house--- specifically a young woman's house. Methinks his problem is that she is both female and a person with an interest that's important to her (besides him). He needs to get over his contempt for something that's important to his wife. (That said, she might need some help to deal with the mental effects of what sounds like it was a career-ending injury.)

Seriously, I have to wonder if the relationship would have survived if she hadn't been injured and had continued having what, from what I know of things equestrian, would have probably been a pretty all-consuming activity.

Also, and this is me coming off several weekends' worth of watching horse racing with my mother, but maybe there are some ways for them to be involved in horses together, like, oh, part-ownership in a racehorse or something? Where his wife can be a part of what was/is clearly a central part of her identity and then some parts of their house can be what I'm guessing is the sort of blandly nonspecific "nobody actually lives here" that he probably thinks is what an "adult" house looks like. (Seriously, I get the sense he thinks that "adult" equals "not being passionate about anything and erasing every evidence of personal interests or tastes". This is a him problem, not a her problem.)

I've seen couples where the husband had decorated every inch of the space with Star Wars figurines and Star Wars legos and Star Wars posters, and refused to budge an inch of the blank space except for specific other objects belonging to the wife, and I wonder if the reaction in this comm would be different to the same letter except with that framing.

(One piece of advice I'd have given to the LW is that "I want less" is, in fact, a decorating aesthetic. A pretty mainstream one, as a matter of fact! "Can we compromise, some horses, and some bare wall as a relief for my tired eyes?" is totally a design choice.)

I dunno, considering I'd prefer Star Wars to horses myself...

To be serious I don't think this example is quite apples to apples. It's more like ---

Husband was a roboticist as a teenager and a very promising one. He even achieved an internship with ILM where he built an original droid about halfway. Then he broke his arm badly, severed the nerves, and lost the dexterity to build such things. He kept the half-finished droid and put it in the foyer of his new home. His wife thinks it's creepy, says she doesn't know "why he's so attached to that kid's movie", and wants to be rid of it.

The point where the husband lost my sympathy was when he said "I don't know why she wants all this stuff" after having told us about her major equestrian career and that it ended in a tragic accident. I think that explains why she wants it, you know? And I don't think it's necessarily pathological or lacking in adulthood for her to want it.

Wanting less as a design choice is absolutely valid but I still think the husband is obliged to present a more detailed plan than simply, "get rid of half this shit". But then this letter seems to me to be part of the same cultural thread as the AITA guy who got mad at his wife for wearing a homemade "toga" (he clearly didn't know or care about her ancient weaving hobby). With the LW's "grandma" and "horse girl" examples I think there's definitely a thread of The Icky Feminine in his response.

fair! his tone is definitely unsympathetic to her, in an icky way.

I'm just giggling to myself because my decor is half scifi (SW and ST mostly) and half horses...

I mean to be fair in the primary couple I'm thinking of she mostly wants space for, like, Doctor Who funko pops.

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Dear Prudence: Help, I Married a Horse Person

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