It’s that easy to make men happy
Yes, the man can laugh there – if the woman also feels comfortable in the relationship
Quelle: picture alliance / Bildagentur-o
What makes men happy with relationships and life as a whole? US psychologists have found an answer that could hardly be simpler. If only it were that easy with women.
What makes a man happy? Many men’s magazines deal with the question and come up with, let’s say, answers with quite limited creativity.
Not that it is any different with women’s magazines – but a study from the journal “Journal of Marriage and Family” agrees with men’s magazines on one point: making men happy is actually very easy. Because men are happy when their partners are happy.
Two US psychologists found this out by analyzing the data of almost 400 couples in which at least one of the partners was older than 60 years and the couple had been married for an average of 39 years.
Deborah Carr of Rutgers University and Vicki Freedman of the University of Michigan looked at the influence of partners’ assessments of each other on well-being and satisfaction with the marriage.
For example, it was recorded whether the participants felt valued by their partners, whether they could mostly understand the feelings of the other, how much the partners argued with each other or got on each other’s nerves.
It was true for both genders that someone who rated their relationship as very good also rated themselves as happier overall – but there was also an effect of the partner’s happiness on their own happiness, and this was different for men and women.
The effect does not apply the other way around
If the partner was happy with their marriage, her husband was happy with the relationship and his life as a whole. But it was not the other way around. A man who was satisfied with his marriage did not automatically have a woman who was happy.
This appears to be because, according to the researchers, women often have a greater burden in relationships than men. Another analysis showed that the woman’s happiness clearly suffered as soon as her husband became ill – not uncommon in old age.
On the other hand, having his wife sick did not greatly affect the husband’s happiness. “We know that women tend to take care of their partner when he’s sick, which is obviously stressful,” says Carr. “But when the woman gets sick, it is often not her husband who takes care of her, but her daughter”.
The researchers looked at very old couples because, although a good relationship is always beautiful, it becomes particularly important in old age when it comes to health. A good marriage, says Carr, is an important protective factor. Happy partners get sick less often and cope with stressful events better.
According to the study, if women take care of themselves and their needs, this is not only a guarantee for their own happiness, but also for that of their husbands. This, in turn, can indirectly ensure his own happiness by also caring about what makes his wife happy. Quite simply actually.
This article was first published in 2014.
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