Never heard it myself, when hearing it though I know immediately what it means.

Yes. As a wife, I hear other wives complain about this quite a bit. Bob doesn't want to do something, so he blames something on the wife to get out of it. Mostly of the time they aren't even aware anything was going on and are blindsided. "Oh man, I wish I could go fishing with you, but Martha has a to-do list a mile long and is going to kill me if I don't do something this weekend. Maybe next time, if I can sneak it past the wife......" Then later Martha is with the girls and tells everyone how Bob "pulled a wife card" and made her look bad.

My husband was formerly in high-end home theater sales, and men would come in and pick out a ton of stuff and later cancel it "because of the wife." I'm sure some of it was true, as there were thousands of dollars of equipment in the average order, but he's pretty sure a lot of it was buyer's remorse and an excuse to return things.

Whenever someone on Craigslist is holding a game for you until you get off work, and when you call at 5:05pm to go get it, they always say "I'm sorry, my wife said I can't sell it".

That means that someone else offered them more money above their asking price.

It's know as "Pulling the wife card".

The marrige equivalent to "the dog ate my homework"?

The wife card can be valid. Sometimes you want to negotiate out what the price of something may be but you do need to get final approval from your significant other and perhaps he/she blows it up for whatever reason.

It is overused as a convienent excuse, but sometimes is certainly valid.

Really? Do people really have to get approval from their wives for hobby stuff?

wife card does not work in my family as my wife always has her foot on the gas.

I am not sure when she has said no to pinball unless it was when I wanted to sell a game and was over ruled.

The wife card is never valid, IMO. Yes...each guy has his own thing going in his respective marriage. But for me, I get what I want and my wife gets what she wants. Do we get pissed off sometimes? Sure. But we love each other enough that it's forgotten a day later. When I tell somebody I would buy a machine but my wife would kill me, that's just me knowing that the particular purchase I'm considering might be a little over the top. I don't TRY to induce stress in my wife. Being married to me is bad enough.

If you ever meet me (and let's hope you don't), ask me how I've played the cancer card. (My family gets cancer like there's a fire sale on terminal diseases.) It's f**king horrible...but it works.

It's one thing if you make your offer contingent on getting your wife's permission ("I'll sell the game/pay $1500, but only if my wife says OK"). In that case the other party can decide if they're willing to wait for you to firm up your offer or not.

I think when people refer to the "wife card," they're talking about someone backing out of a done deal and raising, for the first time, their wife's disapproval as an excuse. Even if true it's different than other excuses (e.g. sudden medical bills) in that you presumably knew you had a wife who likes to be consulted when you made your offer. Either talk to her first, make your offer contingent on her approval, or make the deal and take the heat when you show up with an new, unauthorized game (or sell her "favorite" game for big bucks to pay your bar tab).

Depends entirely on your deal with your wife. I don't give a s*#t what anyone else's deal is, so long as it works for them. If you and your wife are cool making your own spending decisions, good for you. If you want to be consulted before she drops $2k on a purse, and she expects the same before you fill up her parking spot in the garage with a new pinball machine, I can understand that angle too.

But whatever your deal with your wife is, you shouldn't bitch about it -- if you don't like it, renegotiate. And you definitely shouldn't use it as an excuse to back out of a promise you've made because you were embarrassed to admit the limits of your bargaining power.

Sometimes it is certainly appropriate.

"I'd like to buy your BBB you have listed for 20k. I don't want to pay more than 17.5k. Before I bring this up with my wife would you accept a 17.5k offer."

I think that's reasonable. Just depends on the spouse. I'm lucky to have a spouse into pinball so not so much an issue with me.

I always ask her first. I'm surprised that most of time she is fine with it.

Then I don't have to pull any "card" and be that CL flake that wasted someone's time.

Wife card is valid. It's part of the negotiating process.

Wife questions:

"Why do you need that?"

Incorrect Responses:

"Why do YOU need __?" - No

"Because I earn all (most) of the money" - No

"Didnt we give your parents a $50 gift card to the Olive Garden for their anniversary present last week?" - No

"The college fund will be fine. I project a good year for the stock market" - No

"It'll retain its value more than that Pottery Barn junk you bought. What kind of wood is it anyways? This playfield is real wood!" No

#1 excuse people give when walking away from a sale. "I gotta clear it with the husband (or wife) before making a decision."
This is very common when selling bigger ticket items.
It really means that they want to shop around more....
Pinball is a bit different. It's not like you can go down the street to the next pinball dealership like you would a car dealer.

Plus, you're a lawyer. So, you know...just jack up the billable hours.

Having a conversation with your wife/husband about finances, purchases, etc is totally appropriate and valid. I'd expect there to be an already-agreed-upon arrangement for hobby money, or a simple discussion for occasional large purchases, all depending on your financial situation. (Although there was that one time I bought a house without telling him, but we weren't married yet so it doesn't count. )

Using your wife/husband solely as an excuse (and probably without their knowledge) to back out of a sale, make more $ off selling something to someone else, or return something you realized you were in over your head on, etc... that's kind of shady.

Here I thought Taxman was getting hitched......

Sometimes it works in your favor. I was going to buy a $9K movie poster. I told the wife and she wasn't too happy as we were planning a trip. She said to "sleep on it" and see if I felt the same. Well, the next day, my friend said he would sell me his spare one for $3K less! Boom!

When somebody blames their wife all I can think is who wears the pants in that family.

Mine lets me buy any pin I want, but in exchange for her general indifference as to what i purchase, she has veto power for any pin i purchase. She has only pulled the card twice that i can remember..... wwf and some obnoxious system 80b game i can't remember (spring break, raven?)

My wife has been pretty supportive but I can not buy WOZ. She hates the movie and claimed it would get smashed if I brought one Home. I believe her. She also likes two or three pins in my collection and I can not sell. There are real examples of the wife card

I bought a game, picked it up, brought it home, started working on it in the garage....guy calls says he got in trouble with wife because she had bought the game for him originally. I said fine--not a grail game for me anyway, just a project. He came and picked it up and paid me $100 more than I paid...and this was an hour drive 1 way.

I get it.

My wife prefers I not buy what she considers "white trash" themes.

You can be as independent as you want to believe... but if you still gotta live with the person you gotta account for their responses as well. Needing approval or not.. you don't need to create riffs so you better have an agreement in place in how this stuff rolls.

It's absolutely a thing. Anytime someone mentions that they have to check with the wife, 95% of the time the sale doesn't go through.

I've seen wives and gfs not allow their other halves to buy things.

Sad really.

I work at a car dealership and I have always told customers coming in that have to talk to their wife that it is easier to ask for forgiveness then it is for permission.

I am not sure. Let me go ask my wife.

Marriage sounds like fun.

61D0KAEnpvL._SX355__(resized).jpg

What's left?

A wise response. I don't " need" permission to buy anything, neither does she....sometimes I tell her, sometimes not ( I don't think she really cares)...keep the bills paid, tuitions current, and no worries. Occasional blip on the radar if she had earmarked $$ for something, so I will run it past her once in awhile.

No it isn't... Not in my world where you respect your wife at least. Frequent forgiveness wears upon trust. That is what makes relationships work. Don't act like a 3 year old act like an adult. If you know your spouse wouldn't be on board don't be an ass and pretend you didn't know. Women aren't stupid, but guys that think they are, ARE stupid...

Probably the dog.

DogInPants2_(resized).jpg

But had you done more than $100 worth of work on it already? Maybe this was all an elaborate scheme to get tech work done on the cheap ...

Right!..maybe $100 in elbow grease is all. I started my parts order list and was working on some stuck leg levelers. I had the game in the garage for not more than an hour.

In pinball the wife card is very understandable to me. Pinball machines are expensive and take up a lot of house space. Also, some wives feel that a husband's hobby that they are not involved in and have no interest in is bad for them.

We share savings for big ticket items. Everything is discussed internally before we buy anything. Ive said "let me check with my wife first" to buy me time to buy time to get a second opinion from a pinhead. When it comes to cars, or anything else....i usually just tell them I want to check a couple of other places. Im used to people telling me the same thing.

Whole floor of my house devoted to pinball and a floor devoted to her craft stuff. A floor inbetween where we hang out together. Separate finances. I don't ask her about what she buys and she doesn't ask about my purchases. If we need to come up with money we talk about it and come up with a plan.

The wife card is the easy out when you want to tease yourself with the excitement of getting a new pin, or getting a pin you've always dreamed about, or the art of the deal. Sort of like flirting with another woman without going anywhere with it. The fun of the tease. I like to look at the pin market but the wife said, "one." So I have one. Not the dream one, but its better than living year after year saying, "one day I'll have a pinball machine." Maybe one day I'll stumble on a cheap BK or a EBD in need of restoration and sell the Flash. No one ever said, "happy pin, happy life." Oh, wait, maybe some of y'all did.

I just wish I had enough money to test my wife's pinball limits!

Love the new avatar Ted. Laughed aloud.
I use my wifes card everyday. What's in your wallet ?

All of my close friends, when they use it, it's 100% legit...because they all want to get away from their wives.

The flip side of this is collecting stamps. That's when you say yes dear, yes dear, yes dear. Every time you do that you paste that yes dear thing you went along with in a stamp book. When you have been a good boy and given in to every whim and agreed with whatever she wanted....you should have a nice fat stamp book to redeem. Maybe turn it in for a Ghost Busters Premium?

I wonder how much more he was offered for the game over what you paid for it?

It would be fun to stop by unannounced with some token pinball gift just to see the game no longer in his possession.

it was an non working EM with a fairly set value so it couldn't have been enough to make it worthwhile to drive 2 hours...no way. When I bought it he told me the story of how his wife got it for him but he had no interest in fixing it...so, unless this was a REALLY elaborate plan involving driving a couple hours to give me $100...

The wife card routine gets me angry-really angry-when a buyer tries to employ it I simply shut down and ALL negotiations are off. I cannot believe men can be:
A) Pussies for even using this tact. Seriously, do they have not enough backbone to make deals without involving their wives??!?

B) So disrespectful TO their wives that they make them out to be raging bitches??

C) If (B) is indeed true, that they cannot stand up to them and tell them to get their own hobbies & stay the f*ck out of theirs.

I've thrown guys out of my house for doing this. Quite a few times now that I think of it. the last time was just earlier this month when I was selling a small Honda motorcycle. The phone was ringing off the hook for this thing so I told the 1st guy who called to meet me. He INSISTED that we meet at a public place. I told him "No, we're meeting at my home, if you don't want this and are going to be playing games, please move on" So he gets up the 'courage' to actually show up at my house, he's nearly an hour late, and he with his wife (maybe for 'protection', lol). He nervously introduces himself and proceeds to look at the bike. He likes it, starts it and runs it a bit and makes me an offer for $50.00 less than I had it listed for. I accept it, as it was a fair offer and he said he had cash. He then goes over to "The Wife" and asks if they think they can swing it. She flatly says "NO!" He meekishly walks over to me and says, "We don't think this is a good idea right now". I'm like, "really??!? WE??" So after wasting time dealing with this milksop, I tell him good luck in finding another bike that wifey will approve of and, oh, by the way, when you go to buy it, make sure that you leave HER at home but be sure to take your balls with you that she's keeping in her purse. They both got in their SUV and drove off.
The sad & scary thing is this. THIS is America 2016 and these entitled assholes are typical. You may not like what I'm saying, but it's much more common now than it ever was.

This post pretty much explains why I'm anti-marriage.

Wow. Glad I a) came to your house; and b) didn't play the wife card.

Our transaction went really smoothly, which is especially surprising because I've been known to be quite the pussy.

when I was a kid....GET OFF MY LAWN

Dude!...you have to meet the right woman. My wife is an incredible woman and this scenario would NEVER have happened with her. It's all in who you choose to walk the aisle with.