Can't tell if you're joking or not, but this commenter (fsckboy) is using programming/regex-like syntax to write "wife/life" as "(w|l)ife", indicating that, although the parent commenter (JohnDotAwesome) is referring directly to their wife, the commenter (fsckboy) has found it to be true throughout their life AND coming directly from their wife.

In other words, both fsckboy's wife and misc. people in their life tend to only point out that fsckboy is being "overly considerate" when it appears that fsckboy is letting someone benefit from their considerate nature. The implication is that fsckboy considers the behavior as being kind and/or safe, while their wife/companions think of it as being taken advantage of.

The broad concept of this exchange concerns where the line is between being considerate and being taken advantage of, and how others might be incentivized to view that one way or the other.

It's more than that - fsckboy also believes that the people who point this out to them are doing so because they normally enjoy being the only ones taking advantage of fsckboy, and are incensed when others get to take advantage too (in their view).

And so a corollary is that fsckboy thinks their wife is (regularly?) taking advantage of fsckboy, which doesn't sound like they have a great relationship. But maybe this is not actually what fsckboy meant to say, and so we are back to not understanding what they mean.

This was a whole therapy session in like 5 comments.

Yes, this explanation did the trick! I feel like I generally stay overly considerate in order to avoid confrontation, or because there is a chance it makes the other person feel good, which I guess makes me feel good. Things like letting anyone in front of me in traffic, etc...

It confusing because and some instances one part of the wife/life pair makes no grammatical or logical sense.

>I can't speak about your (wife), but in my (wife), people who say this are the people who personally enjoy taking advantage of my nature, and my "overly considerate behavior" is only pointed out when someone else seems to be getting benefit at the expense of my (wife); i.e it's a statement of selfishness.

Rewrite as "in [the case of] my (w|l)ife", which would then cover both expansions, "wife" and "life".