Girlfriends and wifes, how do YOU cope?

First, never, never, never have a girlfriend if you have a wife. Second, always tell the wife the truth about what it costs. She'll throw up. The more she chucks, the more numb she gets to the cost. Always tell her how great it is and how you're getting newer and more expensive equipment to have it be the best. Keep getting more expensive hobbies, sports, toys and collections. The more the better.

When she wants another ring, remind her that you support her in a style others dream about and you're simply not going to spoil her.

Buy another audio piece.

Engineer a custom audio room

Make at least on of your living rooms an audio room that she isn't exactly welcome in. Then make her an office she can tell her girl friends is hers. Then make a theater out of the other living room. Convert the dining room to a living room. Buy a house in another country. Travel so much she doesn't know if her head is screwed on correctly. Tell her again that her life is perfect.
Spend tons of time racing cars away from home. Only invite her to the track for the race weekends. She'll be a pain during practice when you really want to be with the racers. On the weekend, you can't be their friends when you have to beat them, so you'll want her company.

Then make sure that each place you have has so much audio equipment that's great that she thinks SHE'S rich.

Oh, yeah... it helps to be married to her for a long, long, long time. By now, her memory probably isn't very good and her demands are slowing down.

Bill

Probably a better question is, How do they cope?"

I married an audioligist who loves to evaluate sound quality, so all women are not anti-equipment in the living room.

Headphones work nicely.

I see no one has posted to this for a while, and forgive me for doing a bit of catching up on these (newbie) but I am LMAO reading this thread... very great material indeed.
My setup is embarassingly humbly compared to what I have seen on A'gon, but my dear wife, who is stone deaf with ringing in one ear, could hear the difference from our previous system. I feel so bad she misses out on most of what hi-fi is all about but she understands clarity, both equipment-wise and in choice of program, so we get along well with it. Adhering to Angela100's criteria, on occasion, has no doubt "greased the wheels" and also we travel to Japan at least twice a year to see her family so there is equlibrium to some extent from that standpoint.
In the case of a wife who was totally unreasonable, well, I guess that is one case where cryo treatment might really do the trick... ;)