A collaborative study by researchers from Rutgers University and the University of Michigan has found out that indeed, the secret to a happy life is seeing to it that your wife is happy.
The secret to a happy life is in making your wife happy, according to a publication.
This was the conclusion reached by Professors Deborah Carr of Rutgers University and Vicki Freedman of the University of Michigan after assessing 394 heterosexual couples who had been married for an average of 39 years.
The study probed personal feelings using questionnaires that asked both parties whether they felt appreciated by the other, or whether their partners understood them, and suchlike questions. The couples were also asked to keep a diary of their activities, noting their levels of happiness derived from such activities, be it something as mundane as shopping or watching TV.
From the data collected, the researchers found that where the wife expressed more satisfaction with the marriage, the husband tended to be happier, regardless of what he felt about the marriage itself.
According to Carr, this could be due to the fact that “when a wife is satisfied with the marriage, she tends to do a lot more for her husband, which has a positive effect on his life.”
In their studies, couples in better rated marriages tended to demonstrated greater life satisfaction.
Emotional Centers
Women have always been traditionally regarded as the emotional center of a marriage, a factor noted in a previous study assessing conflict resolution within marriages. This study also showed that the happiest marriages were those in which the wives quickly calmed in a conflict, suggesting that the wife’s peace of mind is slightly more important for the overall health of the union than the husband’s.
But there is at least one study whose claim is contrary to these findings, that it is the husband’s happiness that makes the union happy. This was the conclusion from University of Chicago researchers assessing the positivity of 953 couples, married for an average of 39 years.
The one thing the Rutgers/U of Michigan and U of Chicago researchers agree on is that the husband’s poor health is largely detrimental to the relationship, unlike the wife’s ill health. This observation comes from the wife’s engagement as a caregiver when her husband falls ill, yet when the wife falls ill, she will likely be taken care of by her daughters.
Regardless of whoever makes the other happier, it is important to have a satisfying marriage, because “it provides a buffer against the health-depleting effects of later life stressors, and helps couples manage difficult decisions.”
