Ursula: Kurt, this is it! The topic we’ve been dying to write about! I’m so happy this day has come.
Kurt: It’s the phrase that started it all! To think the seemingly innocuous Tidying Up with Marie Kondo would provide us with the inspiration to create this newsletter.
U: God, it was so long ago. You and I were texting back and forth about that show--which we both loved!--and one couple in particular, Wendy and Ron, who hit a nerve with both of us.
K: They were the quintessential sitcom couple. They both seemed to kind of hate each other? At least a little. But the husband’s catchphrase the whole episode was “happy wife, happy life,” whenever anything remotely difficult would come up, he’d defer to that motto and leave the decisions to his wife.
Ursula: It really bugged both of us, and not just because “happy wife, happy life” is a pretty cheap philosophy for what’s presumably one of the most important relationships of your life. We were going OFF in that text thread. We had so much to say about the way people talk about their own marriages and the way society expects marriages to conform to a certain pattern. MATRIMONIUM grew out of that little rant of ours!
Kurt: Our sweet newsletter baby!
Ursula: So let’s get into it. Happy wife, happy life (from here on out shortened to HWHL) is a really common phrase; we’re picking on poor Ron from Tidying Up here, but he is certainly not the only husband guilty of using it. I want to set a scene for you. It’s, let’s say, 2013. I’m at work, surrounded by several male colleagues, all of whom are quite a bit older than me. One of them has recently moved into a new home. Another male colleague asks him how he likes the house, the new neighborhood. The homebuyer answers ambivalently: sure, it’s nice, fine. He smirks, and explains that his wife picked the house out. It was all her idea, so what could he do? “Happy wife, happy life,” he says, and the other men laugh knowingly.
Kurt: What could he do?! You know, besides having literally any input into what is supposed to be a partnership between two loving people.
Ursula: I know! The whole scenario bummed me out, like, is this what it’s going to be like? One day I’ll marry a man and he’ll just trudge through life with me, but I have to call all the shots? There are plenty of reasons to be critical of HWHL, but that was the one that struck me immediately--the husband’s implied inability or refusal to engage actively in an important activity with his wife. It made me so tired, and I wasn’t even married yet.
Kurt: So tired. But we’ve been fed these stereotypes--the powerless husband, the nagging wife--for so long. It’s on TV, in movies, it’s inundated us into thinking that marriage starts out all rainbows and kittens but turns into a miserable slog. And to think I was never marriage-minded!
Ursula: Ha, for real. Everybody Loves Raymond always made marriage look SO fun.
Kurt: I think the pinnacle of that came with Married with Children, a show so over the top with its marriage/family dynamic it was almost parody...almost. The fact that slovenly dum-dum Al had his insanely hot wife Peg and was able to keep her is mind-boggling. But it’s such a common trope, this miserable marriage dynamic. Why do so many portrayals of modern marriages go this route?!
Ursula: It’s so cliché and insulting. I never watched Married with Children, but I did spend one weird, lonely year watching a lot of reruns of According to Jim, which is one of the worst offenders in the sloppy husband/hot wife sitcom canon. But let’s not talk about that time in my life.
Kurt: The HWHL dynamic sucks for both parties involved. If Gil suddenly just left all the decision-making to me, I would be a complete and total anxious mess. I remember from the Tidying Up episode that Wendy would shop passive-aggressively (I didn’t know that was a thing, but I’m impressed) and spend a lot of their money, so it’s not like her side of things were great either!
Ursula: Exactly--it doesn’t serve anyone to actually live out your marriage this way, and can be suggestive of some really bad dynamics in the relationship. As a woman and wife, I don’t want token power. I also don’t want to be saddled with extra work. That’s the ugly side of “letting” your wife completely take charge of, say, how your home is decorated or where you go on vacation. If you think about it for more than a second, it’s just putting all the labor on her shoulders--and we already have plenty of data showing that women bear most of the labor that goes into maintaining a home and family.
In the spirit of fairness, I wanted to see if there were any feminist arguments in support of HWHL, and found this Man Repeller piece from 2017. It’s framed as a debate between two married women, one of whom hates “happy wife, happy life” (Haley) and one who doesn’t mind it (Leandra). But I am unconvinced by Leandra’s perspective, and that’s not just because I disagree with her. I really don’t think she’s grasping the implications of the phrase! She argues that HWHL works for her marriage because her husband is emotionally affected by her happiness, or lack thereof, and that her happiness matters to him. Well...of course. That’s part of being married--we’re all affected by our partners’ emotional ups and downs, and of course we care about their wellbeing. But Leandra presents this almost as a unique facet of her relationship. Besides, she’s writing solely about her own marriage, not about how the phrase is used more broadly. So she’s leaving me pretty cold here.
Kurt: Yeah, Leandra’s argument kind of baffles me. I agree, I didn't get a sense that she knew why it’s such a problematic phrase. Although the part at the end where she equates her happiness to narcissism is kind of shocking. But that could really serve as the basis for another issue entirely. It bothers me that she’s so casual about prioritizing her own wellbeing over her husband’s. And you’re right, we can’t help but be emotionally affected by our partner’s feelings. If we weren’t we’d all be sociopaths!
Ursula: Exactly. It’s also true that being married does often mean sacrificing your needs, to a degree, for your partner. Ideally not too much, and with the understanding that your partner will make sacrifices in return. JD and I have had to compromise plenty, and we’ll sometimes put up with mildly uncomfortable or inconvenient situations for each other’s sake--that’s just what marriage is sometimes. I’d feel weird if we thought we had to rely on some hokey rhyme to justify that to ourselves.
I wrote earlier about how bad the HWHL concept is for wives, but it’s equally bad for husbands. Men have already been given a shit deal in the emotions department: try not to have any, but if you must, make sure they’re in the Angry category. Oh, and be sure not to have any Opinions or Preferences, either. Those things are for ladies only. HWHL plays into that so hard.
Anyway, we’ve been talking about HWHL only in the context of hetero marriages. I’m curious: from what you’ve seen, is this a dynamic that plays out in LGBTQ relationships, too?
Kurt: I am wondering about this too! I can’t say if it’s a thing I notice in other LGBTQ relationships. There is definitely a certain dynamic I notice with some LGBTQ couples, where one person would seem kind of “put upon” if that’s the right term for it. I think most couples probably experience a certain level of sacrifice of their needs occasionally. Maybe that’s a failing on my part that since I consider HWHL a very hetero phrase, I don’t recognize it in the couples around me. And I’m not saying I’m surrounded by perfect LGBTQ couples in perfect LGBTQ relationships either! We can be just as weird and messy and dramatic as y’all straight couples. And I also think it’s because, as queer folk, our stronger cultural visibility is relatively new. There was never an “ideal” example of a queer relationship the way straight folks have had a blueprint in all forms of media since practically forever.
Ursula: I’m sorry, are you telling me that Stanford Blatch was NOT a well-rounded gay character? Color me shocked.
I think it’s also worth talking about what “happy” really means, which is going to be different for every couple. What does each person’s happiness mean, and how much does it include one another? Do you say “HWHL” with a wink and the full confidence that your wife’s happiness accounts for your own, as well? Or do you say it because you’ve stopped putting in effort? ARE THE HUSBANDS OKAY???
Kurt: I think happiness has a different weight to it when you’re in a relationship. The “happy” I felt when I was single is different from the “happy” I feel now in my relationship. When I was single, I cared about my friends and family’s happiness, but those are relationships I could step away from to a certain extent. But when you’re in a relationship, that idea of happiness changes. Or at least it should!
Ursula: That’s the hope! Maybe that’s where some of the cracks begin to form, when one person in the relationship won’t or can’t adjust. It was a challenge for me early in our marriage to keep JD’s comfort and happiness in mind the same way I kept my own, but I’ve gotten much better at it.
Kurt: Agreed. I’ve always been an independent and self-minded person, probably (absolutely) because of my upbringing. Having a serious relationship definitely made me rethink how I viewed my own happiness. It’s a balancing act.
Ursula: Yes--in a healthy relationship, your level of happiness as an individual begins to intertwine with the other person’s. But HWHL sort of implies that one person’s happiness is meant to be subsumed by the other’s. I asked JD for his perspective on HWHL, and his (paraphrased) reaction was similar to mine:
“Happy wife, happy life,” in an archaic and misogynist way, seems to playfully indicate a degree of concession and compromise that is needed for a successful relationship. While I may agree with the spirit of what it’s trying to say, I also think phrasing is fucking important.
Kurt: “Archaic” is definitely the term I’ve been thinking of this whole time. Especially to those in our generation. Those kinds of strict societal roles are becoming less and less vital. Concession and compromise are absolutely important aspects of being in a committed relationship, but those can’t come at the cost of your partner’s well-being. And I think if society keeps trending that way, where gender roles and expectations (Who’s bringing home the bacon?! Who will raise the kids?!) become unimportant, we’ll all be better off for it. Of course I’m jaded, so I’ll believe it when I see it!
Ursula: Yup! And I think you hit on something important there: making compromises and, you know, having honest discussions about your wants and needs is not the same thing as sacrificing your happiness! If it is, that’s not a healthy relationship.
Kurt: And I think that about sums it up perfectly! We hope you enjoyed this surprisingly deep dive into a silly little slogan, and maybe you learned something new. I know for me I learned that nothing rhymes with “husband” so there’s no catchy slogan for them. “Happy Husband, Happy...Headband? Beachsand?”
Ursula: Cleveland? Nightstand? Oh god.
Kurt: Let us know your favorite words that (don’t) rhyme with husband, and we’ll see you in the next one!
