'Happy Wife, Happy Life!'
Goddammit & WTF, you young guys, listen to a boomer for once, will you?
So a guy is supposed to take on the responsibility of making his wife happy? Why?? What if she's unhappy by nature, like a lot of women are? Does that mean the husband is a failure if he can't make her happy? What a freakin' self-fulfilling prophecy! Why isn't she responsible for her own happiness? The whole idea that I'm supposed to devote my life to making an emotionally-unstable person (as, let's face it, many wives are) happy is completely repulsive to me.
That's a responsibility I'm very glad not to have. It seems to suggest that the wife is entitled to be a highly-critical, complaining primadonna with a huge sense of entitlement who is not required to cooperate with her spouse. Trying to keep a person like that happy simply rewards unreasonable behavior and leads to more of it. Also, if we were honest and consistent in this era of gender equality, we would have to admit that it's really a sexist notion, too.
Does the wife have a corresponding responsibility to make her husband happy? The slogan would appear to indicate otherwise. IMHO, guys who live by this motto are just putting themselves in a trap, and setting themselves up for grief.
