happy wife, happy life, right? That's the saying. Your dad probably lived it. Maybe your grandfather

talked about it. You know, maybe you heard your uncle say like, happy wife, happy life. If she's

happy, I'm happy. Ha, ha, ha, ha, you know, and clearly he was freaking miserable. Can we just

agree that the notion that if you just make your wife happy or if you just

make your girlfriend happy, that your life will be happy as well, that it's a lie,

that it's just a blatant lie that leads to us acting in stupid ways and it doesn't get us

anywhere?

Like I think that this is like the bedrock narrative and story that most nice guys buy into. You know, that if you just make your wife or your girlfriend happy, that then you as a man have a chance of happiness.

Like I remember working with a client and he was really upset because he wasn't getting his needs

met physically, sexually in the relationship.

And I said, well, how do you, you know, how do you communicate those things?

You know, like when you want intimacy, when you want to have sex, when you feel aroused

by your partner, how are you communicating those things?

And he said, well, I guess I try and like warm her up to it.

You know, like I'm trying to get her into a place of being happy, of feeling connected,

of I basically have to spend like 24 hours, buy her dinner, you know, take her out,

the flowers, the whole thing.

And I said, okay, so you have the notion that if you make her happy first, then maybe you can be happy, right? Then maybe you can find a sense of happiness. And he said, yeah, happy wife, happy life, right? Isn't that the way that it goes? And this man had been married for, I don't know, 20 years, I think. And I said, okay, well, you've been

married for 20 years. How long have you been trying that? And he said, I guess probably like 16 or 18 of the

years. And I said, okay, how's that been going? And he said, not well. No, not well, man. It was like,

right. So why is it that happy wife, happy life is a lie?

Well, first off, it puts your emotional well-being, your needs, your wants, your desires

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