3 Jan 2012 - QA 8

Dear Guruji, what to do when my spouse always wants to be the boss and chases me up? I love him very much but he makes me restless.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: A gentleman was asked, ‘who is the boss of the house?’
He said, ‘Me! But I have the permission from my wife to say so.’ So the wife had to give permission for him to say, ‘I am the boss.’
You be the boss, but be very subtle. There is a secret about relationships.
One is, you should never make your husband feel small. If you tell your husband, ‘you are vegetable, you are good for nothing. You are a lazy goose!’ His self esteem goes down and he really becomes good for nothing. So however hopeless or weak he is, you should always tell him that he is the best. You should pump his ego. The whole world may say that he has no brains, but you should not say that. As a spouse you should say, ‘you have the best brains in the world. Just because you don’t use it, doesn’t mean that you don’t have it.’
‘So you just don’t use it, that’s all. You have fresh unused brain.’ That is what you should say.
In the same way for women, you should never pour cold water on her emotions. For women, emotional bonding is very important. You should never complain about her parents, her father or her mother or sisters or brothers. If she complains, you keep quiet, don’t say anything. No comment, because if you side them also, you will be in trouble and if you oppose them also, you will be in trouble.
If you oppose her parents, you will be in trouble and if you side with them, she will feel left out. ‘You don’t understand me’, she would start yelling and shouting.
Either way you are in trouble, so keep quiet. Simply move away from there or change the topic.
And if she wants to go for shopping, just give her your credit card. She may have ten pairs of shoes; she may go for the eleventh pair of shoes. If you question why, ‘you don’t have 11 pairs of legs so why do you buy so many pairs of shoes?’, then she will be upset. So for shopping, you should not object.