It goes both ways, too. To have properly “left and cleaved” does not mean, for instance, that an adult has to allow anyone to show disrespect to his or her parents, not even their spouse. There is no reason that a spouse has any right to demand that. The spouse doesn’t have the right to have a vote in family affairs where the siblings alone are voting on something having to do with the care of the parents. The spouse only has a say with one sibling, and that is the one he or she married. A spouse can expect to be included in career decisions with a spouse, but should not expect to have any right to insert himself or herself in dramas going on at the place of employment of the other.
There are in-between things, such as what friends each one keeps and what sort of contact there is with extended family. Neither spouse has total control over that. It is both wrong for a spouse to think she can choose her husband’s friends or whether he gets to see his family and also wrong for a husband to decide that his wife’s opinion on these things ought to make no difference to him.
