I've been married four times and still don't know what women want other than to spend money like water. My current wife just brought home a bag from sephora that you couldn't fit two loaves of bread in and spent $800 ($172 for some eye powder wtf!) You don't get understanding of women from long term relationships. You just get bills and lose your house and one car when they leave.
Here's something I'm learning about men. I'm quoting your post only because it's an example @QuestionAuthority, this isn't aimed at you personally. But men in general all complain about women spending their money, it seems to be an unwritten social convention, expected behaviour for you all to complain about women spending your money. Yet you all love it really
Men seem to feel more manly that they can provide for their woman's luxuries or some similar old fashioned claptrap and complaining is really a way of bragging about it to everybody else. It's the modern-day equivalent of thumping your chest and letting the world know you're an alpha male.
I see the ritual clearly as a woman who has no interest in spending any money but my own. My "what's mine is mine and what's yours is yours" philosophy makes men uncomfortable even though to hear them complain about other women you'd think they'd be thrilled with a woman who only buys shoes when the shoes she's wearing actually break
Just saying, I'm on to you
I loved my first wife's spending so much that I went chapter 7 bankruptcy, lost my cars and my house. I served her divorce papers the day after the BK was filed and closed. The second wife was not too bad with money she served me with papers for finding me in bed with her sister. The third convinced me that her brother needed money badly because he was going to lose his house. I took out a second on my house to loan to her brother only to find out she paid him to lie to me and gambled away $35,000 at a California Indian casino. Her parents were getting remarried for their 30th anniversary, I served her divorce papers as a part of toasting my in-laws at the ceremony (God, that was fun). My current wife has one foot in divorce court and will have the other one in if I see her bring one more $1,000 bag of useless shit home from Union Square. She's already up to $11,000 for the year and it's only August. I'll be $20k in the hole by Christmas. We're going to her parents for Christmas this year, maybe I'll serve her divorce papers during the Christmas prayer. lol
Yeah, I'm loving all the luxuries I'm buying them. It's really fun bragging about digging myself out of the hole she put me in.