There’s an old adage that is very important to logical people (as software engineers are, for example).

“Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?”

My wife wants to throw out our perfectly functional table to get a better looking one. Financially and practically, I am right in fighting this. Is a few hundred bucks worth making someone aesthetically-minded not feel satisfied? No, you have to pick your battles.

That really depends if you like (or are mostly indifferent to) the new table. If you hate it then it becomes a game of "who of us two is more important to satisfy with a table". Definitely not a position you want to be in.

Relationships must be two-way streets, always.

I have made quite a lot of concessions for my wife for the current rented flat -- simply because I did not care about 99% of the things she wanted to change. I only gave her a rather loose framework: "this must fit these physical dimensions as you yourself can see here in this corner" and "I am not willing to spend hundreds to change something that is currently performing to 90% of the standards of both of us" and "how difficult it is to ship and install this?" -- and she has been mature and considerate enough to understand the boundaries and nailed them every single time so far in our 11.5 years together. And she still got almost everything she wanted and is visibly happier with the environment.

When both sides have preferences they feel safe sharing but are still reasonable above all, then things are going smoothly and flow naturally.

Of course there are the rare exceptions where I just gave up and said to her: "OK, I am leaving this to you, figure all the details out and I'll just pay it at the end of the process". I was not unhappy but she did not want to budge on a few things and I ultimately just stashed the old thing in the garage in case she understands she made a bad deal or the new thing was underperforming.

I agree strongly with "pick your battles". You have to be able to read the person in real time. It's actually much easier than most technical people think.

Some people have a habit of creating situations that are…. Not so easy to get out of. My favorite one essentially boiled down to ‘die die die, or I’ll kill you’.

Which, clearly, I struggled to find a useful compromise on.