>>But in the final analysis, it really is a dictatorship. You make the decisions. Ok, maybe you consider her feelings and maybe even those of your children, but then you make the decision ultimately, according to your own choices regardless of those feelings. If they agree then that's nice, but if they don't, it doesn't really matter. At the point of your decision, their job is merely to acquiesce.
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>Again - I guess I'm not being clear - If the wife does not agree, it's my job to understand her and try to resolve that disagreement. I would be foolish to force my wife to do something she did not want to do - that' no way to show love and preference to her.

I kind of think we're talking in circles now. Ultimately, the agreement must be resolved by you. As you said in another post, if your Elders disagreed with you, you'd ask her forgiveness, but if they agreed with you, you would follow Matthew 18, which to me means you'd bring the force of the church to bear on her, and if she still disagrees, then what? She is left as a heathen?

The bottom line here, at least for me, Howard, is that she is not finally responsible to make her own decisions. She is a human being. To me that means she has a right and a responsibility to decide her own life for herself.