Hacker News Reader

Comment by smt88 | Hacker News Reader

Do you, uh... want to explain?

It's definitely a cringy, antiquated phrase, but it doesn't seem harmful. People with wives should tie their own happiness to their wife's, shouldn't they?

View on HN

>People with wives should tie their own happiness to their wife's, shouldn't they?

No, this invites emotional manipulation and abuse: "do/don't do this or you'll make me unhappy".

Loving someone means wanting them to be happy. The type of emotional abuse you describe is available to anyone in a loving relationship.

It's not necessarily about manipulation, it's about not being codependent. If every time your partner is unhappy, you freak out, your ability to be a good partner is diminished. Couples need some buffer between their emotions to dampen extreme lows.

You guys are reading too much into that expression.

They are probably relating lived experience and we should listen.

The phrase isn’t “happy partners, happy life” and there is no “happy husband, happy life” equivalent that I’m aware of. It’s unbalanced, and if you have a partner that reciprocates, it must be confusing why the phrase is a problem. If you don’t, and you continually adhere to the phrase hoping they will until your health suffers, well we might reconsider our casual use of pithy sayings and their influence on children.

It’s clearly a divisive issue here but that usually means people have had a diversity of experiences around the topic.

I always thought it was an observation that people (often men) tend to underestimate how involved and intertwined in their lives their partners are. To these men, having a newly-happy wife improve their life seems like magic. To outside observers, it seems blatantly obvious that having the person you live with be happy will improve your life.

> People with wives should tie their own happiness to their wife's, shouldn't they?

I think it's more that the expectation that husbands exist to serve their wives is harmful.

Be honest, do you really think a phrase meaning "keeping your husband happy and satisfied would make your life better" is not harmful?

> Be honest, do you really think a phrase meaning "keeping your husband happy and satisfied would make your life better" is not harmful?

No, why would it be harmful? The whole point of loving someone is caring about them and wanting them to be happy.

> it's more that the expectation that husbands exist to serve their wives

We have no precedent for this in modern times. Instead, diamond coöpted the dowry’s role in assuring a bride’s family stability in a world that diminished women.

> do you really think a phrase meaning "keeping your husband happy and satisfied would make your life better" is not harmful?

No. Making my friends, colleagues, co-workers and life partner happy makes me happy. If it doesn’t, they shouldn’t be in my life, or I need to adjust my relationship to civilisation.

With complete honesty, the best money I have spent has been experiences with close friends.

it's both actually.

it is each partners responsibility to make the other happy.

so thinking that it is not your responsibility to make your partner happy is the harmful part.

The happiest relationships result from both partners putting the other first. This forum is predominantly men. As a woman, I see variations on that "keep the hubby happy" phrase all over womens' spaces. So yeah. Some equality here is a little refreshing.

I would strongly object that both putting the other person first is a surefire way for happiness.

Putting the other person first at your own detriment can easily lead to destruction.

Key point, the effort must be mutual. Putting your partner first at your detriment should be an intolerable proposition to your partner. In all things, moderation.

I am getting tired of this default perspective that “it’s about time men got around to this.”

Anecdotally I’ve never read or heard the male term IRL so I decided to check the phrases on Google trends. Direct comparison of both full phrases shows that “keep the hubby happy” essentially doesn’t exist:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=k...

Funny that you cherrypick a single phrase that I actually made up, because I was generalizing, and use its unpopularity to insinuate that sexism never existed.

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=h...

Above I'm comparing "happy husband" to "happy wife" because it includes searches for the phrase "happy wife happy life" and I don't know of a similar rhyming phrase involving husband and I want the comparison to be apples-to-apples.

I didn’t insinuate anything about sexism never existing.

I also didn’t cherry-pick anything, I used the exact phrase you said you’d heard all over women’s spaces.

The data you show are based on broad terms that would be difficult to ascribe to any causes or uses as they could just as likely be a reflection of men’s increasingly poor mental health — “why isn’t my husband happy” or the increase in relative participation of wives in Google searches.

Sexism is rampant. I had just hoped the incoming matriarchy would be more compassionate than the previous patriarchy. It isn’t looking good so far.

The reality is the person with lower leverage in the relationship does the keeping of the one with higher leverage happy. In marriages men have the lower leverage due to various reasons. One of which is favorable treatment of women in the family courts.

If your wife is using that as leverage over you, your marriage is already done for.

At 50% rate, it’s not a tail risk! Not to mention the men that “stay in it. Cuz cheaper to keep her”!

If you’re thinking about marriage in terms of leverage you’ve guaranteed you’re going to find out about those courts.

Given that marriage is a business decision, it's absolutely important to be aware of the positions you could possibly end up in, and which situations each of you has society's favor in should a conflict arise. (hint: men are disfavored in family court by default) It's not always happier ever after.

We should not normalize people making rash decisions and chaining themselves to someone to fulfill cultural fantasies about romance. Don't marry someone you're not willing to walk to the grave with.

> If you’re thinking about marriage in terms of leverage you’ve guaranteed you’re going to find out about those courts.

The reality is that in every relationship (whether marriage, business, friend, sibling, whatever) one person will have more leverage than the other.

That's not the problem. The problem is when the party with the leverage uses it! The phrase "happy wife, happy life" is problematic because it normalises the usage of this leverage.

(And if you think women have all the leverage in the average relationship, just wait till you get to over 45 and the kids are all old enough).

> (And if you think women have all the leverage in the average relationship, just wait till you get to over 45 and the kids are all old enough).

“It’s cheaper to keep her” is also a saying. So it looks like she still has the leverage.

I don't know anyone with a marriage that didn't go to "those courts".

You need a better entourage.

"Be honest, do you really think a phrase meaning 'keeping your husband happy and satisfied would make your life better' is not harmful?" It's one of the oldest and best pieces of relationship advice in human history. What the heck is wrong with it?

what the heck is harmful about that?

Maybe I misunderstand the wording as non-native speaker, but I prefer making myself happy, and then happiness spreads on its own further, no real effort required. Also its the easiest person to get happy since I know quite well what I want.

I've heard my share of unhappy comments from mothers that sacrificed their life completely for the kids without thinking about themselves at all, and its not coming back.

In similar vein as in plane losing pressure - first help yourself and then help the others (kids in this case but I still like this comparison)

Relationships are complicated, any random motivational poster's catchy phrase is going to be harmful for a few millions of people.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com