"Happy wife, happy life." My entire life I've

>>17994362
I've rarely seen couples where guys put a shitton of effort in the relationship and girls don't do shit. In my experience, it is roughly equal.
Maybe you just don't notice what women do?
My boyfriend rarely notices what I do for him, but he always notices when he makes something for me. If you hear just your friends side of the story, maybe you just don't know what their girlfriends do for them.

>>17994362
I refused to settle for the "happy wife happy life" relationship. My wife is my equal and my partner. It took me until I was 26 though. Standards means cutting through the weeds.

>>17994362

First and foremost, good for you for taking issue with that ridiculous saying! It's a stupid idea, and one that I believe is molding society in a negative way overall.

That said, I'm a woman in one of those equal relationships that you're looking for. My fiance and I are partners, recognizing our own strengths and weaknesses and using that knowledge to balance each other properly without having to cave when we disagree.

There's no real hard and fast rule for finding what you're looking for, but there are a few guidelines:

1. Be patient. I didn't find my fellow until I was 29, but he was more than worth the wait.
2. Look at how your potential partner treats others around them, including family and those who could be seen as "below" them in some way. If he/she treats them well, it's more likely that they will treat you well also.
3. Look at their work ethic. If they're hardworking, they're more likely to contribute equally to a relationship.
4. Look at their interests. If they express interest in improving themselves, by learning a new skill, language, or even just by reading a new book, it's less likely for them to just give up and let you carry the relationship later.
5. Do NOT rush into engagement or marriage. There are exceptions to all of the above, and you don't want to get stuck with a really good actor/actress who has managed to do all of these things for a while, but will eventually show what they really are. The ones who are genuine will understand your desire to really make a relationship meaningful and permanent on a slightly longer timeline.

And above all else, talk about EVERYTHING. Kids, money, housing, future jobs, porn kinks, I mean everything. The more you talk, the more likely you are to find someone you can truly be happy with and appreciate, while gaining appreciation and happiness from them as well.

Women like me are out there, I promise, but we seem to be hard to find.

Good luck!

>>17994386
Definitely possible that my perspective is skewed, though I have plenty of female friends and I largely observe the same dynamic in their relationships.

And I'm definitely not trying to suggest that women don't contribute to the relationship, just that there's an imbalance there in terms of expectations.

>>17994403
Appreciate it. Will keep at it.

>>17994362
As a woman, this saying infuriates and embarrasses me. It's not funny, and frankly I think it's a bad message to send to girls. I can understand why so many guys get scared away from relationships when they think all women are like this.

Happy spouse, happy marriage, happy life. Bottom line. Women should be just as concerned with pleasing their partner and making him happy. A relationship only works when both parties care and put in effort.

>>17994431
I don't know, I never experienced a huge imbalance in terms of expectations. Me and my boyfriend are equally invested in the relationship and try super hard to make each other happy.
Sure, my relationship isn't equal in a "we split everything 50/50". But it wouldn't make any sense, because we have different personalities, skills and strengths.

I cook, take care of the house and do the laundry. He takes care of the car and our garden, does small maintenance and takes care of taxes and bills.
We split expenses, we buy each other small gifts fairly often (once or twice a month), and he buys me flowers and take away food at least once a week.
He surely apologises more, but he's the one who starts fights more. We rarely argue, tho, maybe 2-3 times a year.

This being said, I think the saying is ridiculous - I don't want to date a doormat, I wouldn't want someone who doesn't take care of his own happiness. But in my experience it has always been mutual - I take care of him and of myself, he does the same. We take each other for granted, for sure, but after years certain dynamics just become habits.

>>17994448
Sounds like a healthy relationship to me. Hope to find one myself some day.

I guess what I'm trying to say about the imbalance of expectations is that this larger idea of "her needs come first" is a big part of our culture's gender and relationship dynamics. I don't want get too preachy or whatever, but it just seems that even in the world of third wave feminism there are all these persistent relics of old gender dynamics. I continually feel like there are more expectations of what a man is supposed to provide for a woman as a "real" man, than vice versa.

Everyone wants what they want and is upset when they don't get it. Both sides do this, but more often with women than with men do I see "my needs aren't being met and it's your fault."

>>17994386
bullshit most girls don't want to put equal effort because they want to be taken care of and they see relationships as a business transaction while expecting men to be more sacrificial and to be blinded by love.

>>17994362
>"Happy wife, happy life."

guys like this are usually good men but they are living a cuck life at the same time. relationships should be like Newtonian laws. for example if you punch a wall if should extort the same amount of force back to you.

When I was younger I was chaotic and directionless and got married in an attempt to fix this void or defect in my personality and while we were together it eventually broke down. When I was single again I felt a lot better and more mature in my thinking and felt I was able to make authentic choices due to no longer being chaotic and directionless and being driven by an essentially negative motivator. I'm currently in a long term relationship and I suppose I've passed the age where I want to fuck around and try to impress new people for the sake of satisfying base urges, insecurities and I'm bored of the repeat experience which while unique, is not unique in being a repeat of the new experience and the same old jokes and routines.

What my partner brings to my life is a deeper connection and understanding and depth of experience which can only come from sharing serious time and shit together. I've got a form of comfort and familiarity there and this is no longer scary or alarming to see develop. I'd say that for a fairly 'normal' guy, society is setup to reward conventional success and measures these things in normative ways, if you play by the rules you tend to get on. If you are motivated by being socially accepted by your friends, colleagues, family etc and by doing well in life you play along with the normative roles and one of those is being a decent guy with a decent job who takes care of his family and house and builds a stable and loving home within which to raise a family who advances the prospects and position of the family throughout the generations.

Happy wife/happy life is basically a simplification of that. If I still lived alone I'd not have done half the shit I am institutionalised into liking for some reason. Fuck the garden, fuck the kitchen, fuck the heating system and the roof, fuck having a shiny car, fuck cooking and having cookware, fuck about 50% of my hobbies. Purposeless men are fairly despised by society at large and choose a hard path.

>>17994362
I'll live by those rules as long as she doesn't get fat

Why do you even want to get married at all?

>>17994491
>Sounds like a healthy relationship to me.
You say so. Some of his friends make fun of him because he buys me flowers every week, some of my friends think I'm crazy submissive for taking care of all the housework and the cooking.

Being in a relationship means investing your time and energies to make another human being happy. It's usually mutual.
The expectations exist for both genders, I don't think guys have it much worse than girls.

>Everyone wants what they want and is upset when they don't get it.
I hear a lot of guys saying that kind of shit - about sex, for example. Or about not getting enough free time.

>>17994543
Completely untrue in my experience.

>>17994574
Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say on a simple level reduces me to a basic stereotype. My point is while this sucks, the alternative often sucks more. Like I keep a decent garden and I grow vegetables and chop firewood and have interests outdoors and my partner is happy and my family are happy and her family are happy and I've got cheerful things to talk about at work and everyone at work is happy and so I feel pretty good most of the time.

Compared to abusing stimulants and staying up playing veedya occasionally masturbating for the entire weekend while living on no food and whisky then having to lie to my family about what I'm doing and lie to my colleagues about what I'm doing and letting the garden fall to shit and avoiding my neighbours.

I'm not saying the extremes are totally realistic, but generally society supports me in the first endeavour and as lame as it sounds, I'm kind of a big dumb upright walking monkey in the modern world despite wanting to be a disconnected intellect above the chemicals which slosh around my brain.

>>17994575
>Wife decides to get THICK
>this is somehow a bad thing

>>17994593
>Completely untrue in my experience.

why are girls so against splinting the bill then or taken turns paying for dates?Why is everything about money when it comes to a divorce?

If women are so equal to men and contribute so much to relationships. Then how did they manage to leave their families to go march without the family becoming dysfunctional.


https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/22/nyregion/womens-march-montclair-nj.html?_r=0


>“Doing everything by myself all day long is not typical,”

>>17994630
I take turns paying for dates with my boyfriend, and all my friends do as well.
I also provided for him financially for 2 years in total while he was between jobs, and paid off his college debts.

Because a family doesn't become dysfunctional in a day. A father should be able to take care of his own kids for 12 hours without killing them, and an adult should be able to look after himself for a day without a woman taking care of him. What's your point? How does it say anything about what women and men regularly do for the relationship?
Also - did you even read the article?

>>17994362

the truth about most any relationship is that if you want it to last one person has to give in.

if one person doesn't give in, than they just argue and break up.

even on a friendly level you tend to have one person who holds more power than the other.

we tend to cave in to woman cuz thats the way the pwoer dynamic has shifted, especially with divorce. back in the day it was about making sure your man was happy otherwise you were a bad wife and didnt deserve him.

things change, which isn't exactly bad, but one day we might find equality. the problem is equality is hard to balance in a relationship

>>17994652
>Also - did you even read the article?

yes I read the article men had to work a bit more but still manage to pull it off without the privilege females who got to march. society was running okay without women around but do you know what would happen if all the men when to march? society would be in chaos because men would have to leave their jobs that are maintaining society and leave their families to defend for themselves. single mothers are terrible mothers and you can see that in prisons because most men in prison were raised by single mothers.

>>17994786
It was on a Saturday. Most people don't work on Saturday.
Society would run okay even if men went marching on their day off.

And there are 85 women working every 100 men working, it's not like you're the only ones who are having a job or doing shit. The majority of women work.