Gary Coal Man
Footballguy
I need the FFA's collective wisdom to settle a dispute with my wife. I'll let the FFA decide my fate, and I'll follow through with what ever you decide.
Here's the issue:
We're having a parking dispute with our neighbor. Technically, my wife is having a parking dispute with the neighbor, and she wants me to go deal with it. I, however, agree with my neighbor on the facts of the case, and think my wife is being irrational and over demanding.
Here are the facts:
The houses in our development have two car garages that open onto a back "alley". It's an alley in the sense that it does not have a street name and is used only by the residents accessing their garage or parking in the back of their house. The alley is as wide as many streets and two cars could easily drive by each other on opposite sides, but that's almost never necessary since so few people access the road.
Each garage has a short driveway from the garage door to the alley. The driveway is about about six feet long. Since these "two car" garages are extremely tight, a couple neighbors will park their second car outside the garage. They'll attempt to park their car horizontally to their garage door on their short driveway, but since the driveways are so short a portion of their car or even half of it sticks out into the alley. Once again, not a huge issue to rational people since there's still plenty of room to drive around a car sticking out into the alley.
My garage essentially mirrors the garage of the neighbor who lives behind us. The garages are almost directly across the street from each other. My neighbor used to park one of his cars on his driveway in the horizontal manner I mentioned such that it would stick out into the alley. My wife would always complain that his car made it impossible for her to back her car out of our garage. It didn't. Any male driver would be able to back out of our garage with ease, and even most female drivers would as well. Despite this my wife complained to our neighbor, and he started parking his car on the street in the front of his house for about a year.
Recently, our neighbor has once again taken to parking in the back alley in the way that drives my wife insane. This time, however, she wants me to talk to our neighbor about it.
I don't want to ask my neighbor to move his car for several reasons:
1. Any normal driver but for my wife can easily back out of our garage without my neighbor's car creating an issue. I told my wife that we can always switch our parking spots so that she parks on the street in front of our house while I park in the garage. Problem solved. My wife doesn't want to do that, however, because she transports our daughter two and from daycare more than I do so she wants the garage spot to shelter our child from the elements.
2. My neighbor recently had a daughter and now has two young kids -- a toddler and a baby. I tried to reason with my wife that our neighbor likely returned to parking in the back because it's easier access to his house from the garage with the kids than it is to parking on the front street and walking a further distance up stairs. Plus, it's easier to store strollers in the garage and instantly jam in the car parked right outside the garage. My wife doesn't care.
3. Even if my neighbor had no kids, I'd still agree with my neighbor over my wife. Half his car is on his property and half is on a common area that doesn't disturb anyone other than my wife. Further, another neighbor parks in this same manner. Why should my neighbor not get the benefit of parking like other neighbors do?
Current state of affairs:
My wife has been harping on me for weeks to say something to our neighbor. I've been intentionally ducking doing this because I believe my wife is wrong. This weekend the situation hit a boiling point because I was slamming beers with my neighbor. When I came home and she asked what he said about the parking, I replied, "I didn't ask him." (He's a nice guy and I don't want to put him in a position where he either moves his car and secretly hates us because of it or he's put in a position where he has to tell us off.)
My wife is now complaining that I'm a pansy who is afraid to ask him to move his car. I'm not a pansy, I just agree with my neighbor over my wife. My wife says that we're a team and that I should side with her regardless of the situation. She's demanding that I, not her, ask the neighbor park his car elsewhere because I'm the man, and this is the man's job in a marriage.
What would you do?
Here's the issue:
We're having a parking dispute with our neighbor. Technically, my wife is having a parking dispute with the neighbor, and she wants me to go deal with it. I, however, agree with my neighbor on the facts of the case, and think my wife is being irrational and over demanding.
Here are the facts:
The houses in our development have two car garages that open onto a back "alley". It's an alley in the sense that it does not have a street name and is used only by the residents accessing their garage or parking in the back of their house. The alley is as wide as many streets and two cars could easily drive by each other on opposite sides, but that's almost never necessary since so few people access the road.
Each garage has a short driveway from the garage door to the alley. The driveway is about about six feet long. Since these "two car" garages are extremely tight, a couple neighbors will park their second car outside the garage. They'll attempt to park their car horizontally to their garage door on their short driveway, but since the driveways are so short a portion of their car or even half of it sticks out into the alley. Once again, not a huge issue to rational people since there's still plenty of room to drive around a car sticking out into the alley.
My garage essentially mirrors the garage of the neighbor who lives behind us. The garages are almost directly across the street from each other. My neighbor used to park one of his cars on his driveway in the horizontal manner I mentioned such that it would stick out into the alley. My wife would always complain that his car made it impossible for her to back her car out of our garage. It didn't. Any male driver would be able to back out of our garage with ease, and even most female drivers would as well. Despite this my wife complained to our neighbor, and he started parking his car on the street in the front of his house for about a year.
Recently, our neighbor has once again taken to parking in the back alley in the way that drives my wife insane. This time, however, she wants me to talk to our neighbor about it.
I don't want to ask my neighbor to move his car for several reasons:
1. Any normal driver but for my wife can easily back out of our garage without my neighbor's car creating an issue. I told my wife that we can always switch our parking spots so that she parks on the street in front of our house while I park in the garage. Problem solved. My wife doesn't want to do that, however, because she transports our daughter two and from daycare more than I do so she wants the garage spot to shelter our child from the elements.
2. My neighbor recently had a daughter and now has two young kids -- a toddler and a baby. I tried to reason with my wife that our neighbor likely returned to parking in the back because it's easier access to his house from the garage with the kids than it is to parking on the front street and walking a further distance up stairs. Plus, it's easier to store strollers in the garage and instantly jam in the car parked right outside the garage. My wife doesn't care.
3. Even if my neighbor had no kids, I'd still agree with my neighbor over my wife. Half his car is on his property and half is on a common area that doesn't disturb anyone other than my wife. Further, another neighbor parks in this same manner. Why should my neighbor not get the benefit of parking like other neighbors do?
Current state of affairs:
My wife has been harping on me for weeks to say something to our neighbor. I've been intentionally ducking doing this because I believe my wife is wrong. This weekend the situation hit a boiling point because I was slamming beers with my neighbor. When I came home and she asked what he said about the parking, I replied, "I didn't ask him." (He's a nice guy and I don't want to put him in a position where he either moves his car and secretly hates us because of it or he's put in a position where he has to tell us off.)
My wife is now complaining that I'm a pansy who is afraid to ask him to move his car. I'm not a pansy, I just agree with my neighbor over my wife. My wife says that we're a team and that I should side with her regardless of the situation. She's demanding that I, not her, ask the neighbor park his car elsewhere because I'm the man, and this is the man's job in a marriage.
What would you do?
