OP, I'm reading your post as having 3 main issues:
1. You are anxious because you don't know where your money is going or if it's ok for you to spend on items at any given time;
2. You and your spouse do not have a shared financial vision;
3. You are seeking ideas on how to jointly manage money to meet your goals.
My suggestions:
1. Track spending (excel, quicken, personal capital, mint, ynab)
2. Spend real time to do the real work of developing a shared financial vision with your spouse. From your post it sounds like you have different spending styles; it's not clear if you've talked about and agree on major financial goals. If not, that's a priority conversation and should include specific manifestations of those goals (ie, what does 'helping the kids with higher education' really mean? You'll pay for 4+ years at an Ivy League, or the kid can borrow the car a couple of days a week so they can drive to the local community college?) Btw, be prepared to not get everything you want in the plan. My spouse and I go for a plan we can both live with and work towards, but it doesn't exactly match either of our ideals because we're very different from each other in our goals.
3. Based on your goals and needs as a couple, jointly implement a plan to get there.
If you've done all this and I've misread, great.
It sounds a bit like you've jumped to #3 without going through 1 & 2. If your spouse is anything like most people people and you show up with a neatly packaged set of goals & plan in hand without doing the work together, she *might* feel manipulated and/or resistant to the plan.
+ 47 on the separate discretionary accounts. So easy, so fair, and requires both folks to be responsible for their individual choices.