If you have ever tried to agree on furniture with your wife, you will understand my plight when we had to pick out a coffee table together. We had shopped together for other things before, but the only thing we ever agreed upon was our coffee maker. Everything else is a battle compared to shopping for that first coffee machine.

My wife and I are both type A professionals with strong convictions and strong tastes and not afraid to voice either. We usually are able to let the other have enough space to create and function in their own way, but when it comes to our common space, we both have a lot to say about it. We have had some major battles about the furniture in the living room , how to arrange it, what color each room should be painted, what accessories to buy, etc. This is exactly what happened when we decided we needed to have a new glass topped coffee table.

There are at least a dozen stores that sell glass topped coffee tables in our immediate vicinity, and we went to each one. In all of these, there was not one table that suited the both of us. I have good taste, if I may say so, and prefer clean modern lines; an table that is elegant and fencing at once. We also had to consider the size of the living room it was going into. My wife prefers furniture that is more elaborate and detailed, bordering on rococo. Every thing she liked looked overly ornate and vulgar to me. She was probably looking for a table with claw feet and curlicues on the surface. The type of tables she liked might have looked fine in Palace of Versailles, but not in my living room.

It was one of the worst confrontations my wife and I have ever had. We tend to be histrionic in our fights in any case, and our fights are worthy of novels in and of themselves. I remembered the last big row we had, and I didn't want to experience something like that again. Over a house or a car, perhaps, but over a coffee table?

Compromise ruled, and we ended up with a table neither of us likes, a little of her taste, a little of my taste and a lot of somebody else's.