Monday, September 3, 2012

Unhappy Men & Happy Women

So recently there was an article about the correlation between men's and women's happiness within a relationship. (Read here:http://bit.ly/AhQgZL) In a nutshell it says that women are happier when they know that their partner is upset or unhappy because it means that he is committed to the relationship. Meanwhile, men are happy when their woman is happy.

The article does go one to describe the differences between men's and women's perceptions and how that each can be happier by being more sensitive to each other's feelings. While this is interesting, it is not very helpful. So I thought that I would summarize the cycle and that this might shed some light on things.

The relationship cycle:

Man Unhappy = Woman Happy.
Woman Happy = Man Happy.
Man Happy = Woman Unhappy.
Woman Unhappy = Man Unhappy.
Repeat.

So there it is. After all of these years, some evidence to support what we have all experienced and known to be true. But like many things, it has been hard to capture or record into a pattern. Thanks to the Journal of Family Psychology, we now know officially why there are ups and downs in a relationship. 

But what does this mean to each of us who are trying to successful navigate the waters of a relationship with our significant other? One the upside, I suppose it says that men and women do indeed balance each other out. It also suggests that life within a relationship will be both happy and unhappy. Maybe it lets us off the hook from thinking that a relationship needs to be happy all of the time.

However I offer this, perhaps it means that we can feel comforted to know that the bad times will be fleeting since men and women are not meant to be unhappy together for long and that next good time is just around the corner.

No comments:

Post a Comment