A bit of pressure will do very little if anything to decent camera gear, except for maybe your lens hoods ($50 max, if they break, buy a new one). What you want to avoid is big accelerations which can affect the circuit boards inside. If there’s play, you drop your camera bag stops before your camera, which has more time to accelerate into the ground, meaning your camera will be going faster than if your bag just dropped when it hits. A $1-2K camera costs more than a lens hood.

No, you should probably figure out how to communicate that to her.

That said, I’ve heard from a McLaren salesperson that he has a client who buys the new version of the his car in the same color every couple of years, keeps it under a cover in his garage and told his wife he’s had the same car for over a decade so to each their own!