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You know that old saying “happy wife, happy life?” Well, science confirms it’s actually true. A study from Rutgers University finds that marital bliss is strongly linked to whether or not the woman in the relationship is happy.
Researchers looked at 394 couples to see how the woman’s satisfaction affects the happiness or misery of the relationship overall. They determined that in general, men tend to be happier in their relationships than women, but in terms of overall life satisfaction, how the wives feel about the marriage directly contributes to whether their husband is happy or not. If she’s miserable, the whole relationship may be bad, but on the flip side, if the husband is miserable, the relationship tends to suffer a lot less.
Their research concludes that the reason “happy wife, happy life” is true is because a happy wife tends to be more willing to try to please. “If a wife is happy in her marriage, she will try hard to create a positive experience for her husband,” explains study author Deborah Carr. And on top of that, when women are unhappy, they’re much more likely to talk about it and even be “confrontational” about it, while men tend to “sit and seethe silently,” Carr says. And that’s especially true for older couples from generations where talking about your feelings just wasn’t a thing.
Source: Your Tango