Oakmax,
+1 on that welcome to the forum.
It looks like you are in a win-win situation. Give the little woman your current R9, obtain a second R9, maybe a Stealth or a Robar-treated one now that you know you like the basic design.
Then take the wife to the range and have her shoot the old R9. She may find the recoil too snappy to handle, and / or she lacks the hand strength to rack the slide. (Be sure you have installed a brand-new recoil spring before the slide-racking exercise...
)
At that point, you may have both R9s in your hands, and your wife goes back to the S&W....
Seriously, I let my wife try my R9. She didn't have the hand strength to rack the slide with a new recoil spring in place. Didn't like the sharp recoil impulse either. I remember Eric Rohrbaugh saying the R9 is not a gun for a greenhorn.
Steve