Leader or Dictator?

Katy McLaughlin wrote an interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal about the benefit of having an occasional dictator in a marriage relationship. She cites an example where her husband went ahead and hired some house painters before she felt she was ready for them. She had not yet settled on each of the colors and was furious that he went ahead without having a consensus.

"We'll get started and figure it all out as we go," her husband told her. "It's time to make it happen."

Although McLaughlin later admits that he made the right decision — an admission that she is not yet ready to share with him — she concedes:

In a democratic system like a marriage, where two parties enjoy a 50-50 split in voting rights, it’s uncomfortable when one party designates himself or herself the dictator and makes a decree. 

But she also knows it is necessary to get things done.
In my book, The Sigma Male, I make this distinction: While decision-making can be split 50/50, true leadership cannot. A true leader is not a dictator — he does not make all of the decisions — but he must take responsibility for the outcome of all decisions. Someone has to, even if the stakes are not high. This greater lesson (taking responsibility for the outcome of decisions vs. just making them) is aptly described by McLaughlin:

One party having the total confidence that this is the right thing to do is, I believe, the first requirement for decree-making. It relates to the second requirement, which is a willingness to take responsibility for the consequences. It's not always possible to completely mitigate the impact after the fact, but it's important to let your spouse know you understand it will be your job to clean up any mess.

McLaughlin's husband, Alejandro, did just that. He made the decision and then stood ready to fix anything that might have come up as a result. This fact is not lost on his wife, as at the end of the article she says — tongue-in-cheek — that she’ll wait to “see how the house looks when the paint dries” before finally giving him due credit for the decision. In effect, he will have to maintain responsibility for his decision until she deems the work — ergo the issue — completed.
The article raises another point of interest for anyone interested in becoming a  Sigma Male. McLaughlin mentions a time when she decided the couple needed more life insurance because:

For Alejandro it was a nonissue: None of his Uruguayan friends or family have life insurance, which he considered a symptom of Yankee neurosis.

She uses this example to show that she too makes decrees in their marriage. However, I see her story as an example of a husband who really missed his chance to be his wife’s ultimate Protector and Presider. A man’s responsibility isn’t to gauge the size, ferocity, or reality of his wife's worries. Knowing that his wife was concerned about something should be enough to spur him into action. In this case, if McLaughlin was worried about life insurance, her husband’s opinions — and the opinions of friends and family — should’ve taken a back seat.
Had Alejandro taken appropriate action to begin with, McLaughlin wouldn’t have to have made a decree in the first place. The minute she told him that she was concerned about not having enough insurance, he should have said, “No problem. How much would you like me to get?"
Better yet, he should have upped the policy and given it to her along with a nice card  that read, “Don't ever worry about the future. I've got it covered."
Having followed that advice, I believe his wife would have let him paint the house chartreuse.
Well, maybe not chartreuse…
Updated and revised from a previous post.
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Dr. John Alexander is an expert on marriage relationships and the author of The Sigma Male: What Women Really Want. To learn more about the Sigma Roles in marriage, visit his website, subscribe to his blog, “like” his page on Facebook, and follow him on Twitter.