Are you one of those women who plays Superwoman while your husband takes a back seat? Dr. Carin Rubenstein, a psychologist and author of The Superior Wife Syndrome: Why Women Do Everything So Well And Why -- For the Sake of Our Marriages -- We've Got to Stop, says that this arrangement is bad for your marriage.

Q: What is the "Superior Wife Syndrome"?

A: The Superior Wife Syndrome is what happens when we, meaning wives, get in the driver's seat and allow our husbands to get in the back and coast. It's what happens when we do all the thinking, cooking, bill paying and child caring because we think we can do it better. We take control and, whether it's conscious or not, it's something that happens in two out of every three marriages.

Q: Is it a relatively recent phenomenon?

A: It's recent in the last couple of decades. It used to be, back in the 1950s and 1960s, "Father Knows Best" time. Men were considered the head of the household, period. But now that women are in the workforce and earning their own living, it's much more common for wives to be the ones who do all of the thinking and all of the planning -- they basically run the household.

Q: How does this make marriage more difficult?

A: It's bad for marriage. It makes wives resentful and irritable when it comes to their husbands. Wives end up not having a partner, but another child. That's no way to run a good marriage. Husbands might think they get off easy by having a wife who does everything, but that's not the case. When you have a resentful wife, you have a wife who's unhappy and who doesn't want to have sex with you and who's depressed and maybe even nasty.

Q: How is control at odds with intimacy?

A: An intimate bond is one where you trust each other and share pretty much everything that can be shared. When there's one person who's monopolizing all of the control in the marriage, that's a very unequal balance and it's very hard to have an intimate relationship when things are so out of sync. And I think it's natural for wives to resent a partner who's not really a true partner. When you get that resentment, the intimate bond is gone.

Q: How do men with Superior Wives behave?

A: Men with superior wives wait for their dinner to be served, have someone who pays their bills and have somebody who deals with their children all of the time, except for the rare occasions when they are asked to deal with the children themselves. Their day-to-day life might seem easier because their job is to have a job and that's about it. Sometimes their job is to mow the lawn and change the oil in the cars. In many cases, they're content to relinquish control. I'm not saying that this is a conscious decision on both parts -- it's something that often just happens to people. We know from research that when couples get married, they expect two things: that the wives will continue to work, and that they will share all of the household chores. This ends up true for the first little bit, but almost as soon as children are born, that goes completely out the window. This happens slowly over time, but as soon as the children arrive they're considered the wife's job and it permeates their entire lives. Suddenly, a couple looks up after five years of marriage and nothing is as equal as they thought it would be when they got married.

Q: So do Superior Wives need to demand more of their spouses?

A: I'm not sure I would put it that way. Unfortunately, the onus is on them to fix this, too, just as the onus is on them to do everything else. They have to learn to expect less from themselves, to be less than they can be. And they have to set different standards; not "Would you do the dishes tonight?" but "Someone has to do the dishes and someone has to give the kids a bath; which one would you prefer to do?" They have to devise ways for their husbands to step up to the plate and then let go of their need to supervise.

Q: Any other tips for avoiding or fixing this issue?

A: I think more and more women are avoiding it by postponing marriage, but we know that most women do eventually marry at some point. If you're not married yet, just knowing that this is likely to happen in your marriage may help you prevent it, and if you're already in a marriage like this you need to talk to your husband about it. A lot of times, wives think their husbands have some kind of ESP and know how unhappy or resentful their wives are -- but that simply is not the case.