We have a very large garden that is looked after in the main by a gardener who is known to us as "me tree man". However, we love to potter about out there ourselves when we have the time, so me tree man always leaves a number of jobs for us to do.
One of those jobs this spring was to prune back a shrub that is one of my wife's garden favourites and blooms about now in beautiful yellow flowers for many weeks.
So, I set about pruning it back hard as directed by me tree man much to the great concern of my wife who stood close by at that time trying to overseeing the whole operation.
It got to the stage where I was back to the offshoots near the main branches with my other half becoming ever more worried that I was "doing in her favourite garden plant". She then threatened that if I bent over again to cut off any more off, she would do severe damage to my rear end with the trowel she had in her hand.
Anyway, carefully protecting that rear end and with great explanation as to what I was doing, I overcome her objections and pruned the final few offshoots.
With feeding and watering It has now come on in leaps and bounds and this weekend has begun flowering and my wife is now in agreement with me that it looks lovely.
So, to the OP I would say that good communication is most definitely the secret of peaceful joint gardening, and certainly in my case, personal safety. ?