I'd love to hear some thoughts from any of you business owners on how you've managed to apply RP to your relationship.

My wife and I have owned a business together that we started almost 20 years ago. It has provided us a stable (and very high) income for most of our married life and is good honest rewarding work. We have always considered ourselves to be partners in the business but day to day, I'm the "CEO" and she's more of the "VP", and she has generally always deferred to me to make decisions and she helps implement those decisions.

We've occasionally had an undercurrent of a power struggle where she has ideas that I may not implement, and then she gets hurt and says I obviously don't value her. Sometimes I implement her ideas even when I don't love them, but I do it to keep the peace. Rejecting her ideas is always a massive blow to her self-esteem (she can be extremely childish at times, which I see as a good sign but it's still annoying AF.)

The truth is, she is highly competent in her work and her contributions to the business are a huge reason why we've been successful. But at the same time, I find myself not going certain directions because I want to avoid the shitstorm that would inevitably ensue if it's a direction she's not down for. So I often stay the course and keep the status quo and that sucks.

I've thought about firing her from the business; telling her that I just want her to be my wife and SAHM for the kids and let me handle the business 100%. I don't want her to feel rejected and I sincerely believe that for the business it'd be better to have her participating, but for our personal life I would rather have her just as my wife.

Really torn here. If anyone is in a similar situation, please share what your thoughts.