My gf and I have had a trad relationship from the start. I moved her in with me about a month after we started dating; she takes care of the home and I bring home the bacon.

One thing I’ve learned is to let go control of anything related to the home. I used to have very particular tastes in decor, I would encourage her to cook certain kinds of food, and so on.

Now I tell her, “you have complete domain over the home; I don’t want to have to think about it.” I encourage her to decorate it in her style and cook whatever she pleases.

Beyond merely giving up control, I’m encouraging her to do things truly in her own way. My gf has a great sense of style and has killer instincts when it comes to cooking. Sometimes she doesn’t listen to her own gut and pressures herself to follow a cookbook or some other instructions to the letter. The result is always worse than when she goes with her intuition.

In the past, internally I would get upset when something didn’t go the way I liked at home. For instance, when we have a steel security door in front of our front door, and it’s annoying to have to fumble around in the dark when I get home from work to unlock this additional door. Intellectually, I’ve always understood why my gf keeps it locked (it’s for her safety when I’m away). But it wasn’t until I accepted that she’s now in charge of the home that I started to relax.

None of this weakens our dynamic. If anything, it intensifies it. She’s much better able to relax into her natural soft feminine energies knowing that I trust her to run a house and that she has a space to grow into being a SAHW and eventually a SAHM. And it frees up my mental energy to focus on my own duties and interests.