In The Comancheros, Captain Jake Cutter (John Wayne) is talking to Pilar Graile (Ina Balin) about her relationship with Paul Regret (Stuart Whitman), who has just realized how much Pilar cares about him.
Pilar: Now he’ll be so sure of me he’ll be impossible to manage—or so he thinks. But I shall find the opportunity to teach him otherwise.
Jake laughs.
Jake: Oh, I’m sorry. I’m just glad that I’m not your age—or Regret’s. I went through all that. Me and my wife used to fight like a couple of wildcats with only one tree between us. But sooner or later, missy, you’ll find out that it doesn’t make a tinker’s damn who’s got the upper hand. A few years roll by and you kinda settle down to bein’ at ease with each other. Then life gets worth living.
Pilar looks at Jake with a sly smile.
Pilar: In every relationship between two human beings, one is dominant and one is subservient.
Jake: Well, you make it sound like it’d be one long war.
Pilar: Isn’t it?
Jake looks at her with a small and knowing smile.
Jake: Missy, you got a lot of surprise comin’—some good, some bad.
(Image: 20th Century Fox, via trailer on YouTube)