Study Finds That Blindly Agreeing With Your Spouse Won’t Make You Happy
Happy wife, happy life. That's the saying. Just go along with whatever your wife wants and you'll be better off in the long run. In theory it seems like a good strategy, but does it really work? What happens when you actually agree with every single thing your wife says? According to one study by researchers at New Zealand's University of Auckland, nothing good.
The study was performed by two professors Bruce Arroll and Felicity Goodyear-Smith; a statistician, Simon Moyes; and an associate professor, Timothy Kenealy. The team wanted to see how couples would fare when they tested to see what was more important — being right or being happy. Most marriage experts say that for couples to succeed, it's vital that when an argument arises, each weighs if pressing their point and being recognized as correct is worth the toll it might take on the marriage.
When the team started their experiment, they noticed that the people stressed being right, even when it resulted in non-stop fighting and everything else your single friends say will be awful about being married. They guessed it was about feeling a sense of power over the other person. "Three of the authors are general practitioners who see many patients and couples who lead unnecessarily stressful lives by wanting to be right rather than happy," wrote the team in their report, titled "Being Right or Being Happy." "So, when we looked a bit more closely, we saw that ‘right versus happy’ was not so much about getting crowned the winner or loser, a genius or fool; it was more about flawed thinking and a desire to want to feel being in control."
In order to push their idea even farther, the experts found a married couple who agreed to record how they rated their quality of life, on a scale of 1 to 10. The man, who said he would rather be happy than right, was informed about the purpose of the study. He was instructed to agree with his wife (who was not informed of the larger goal of the study) no matter how much he disagreed. For example: If she wanted to turn off a game he was watching so she could indulge in one of the 87 Real Housewives shows, he would say "Sure thing honey." Or if she wanted to paint a room even though it was just painted last year, he would say "Yes dear." Non-stop agreements.
Those non-stop "yes to everything" sent things spiraling. As you would guess, the man's quality of life declined rapidly, from 7 to 3. At first, the woman enjoyed her newfound power, as she reported her quality of life rising, from 8 to 8.5. But then, as the experiment wound on, she started feeling a bit crazy.
"Rather than causing harmony, the husband’s agreeableness led to the wife becoming increasingly critical of what he did and said (in the husband’s opinion)," explained Time. "After 12 days he broke down, made his wife a cup of tea (New Zealand is, after all, a Commonwealth country), and explained the experiment. At this point the Data Safety Monitoring Committee, as the researchers called it, stopped the study because of 'severe adverse outcomes".
In the end, agreeing to everything your wife says spells doom for both of you. Of course, constantly screaming "no!" won't help either. So we suggest agreeing about 75 percent of the time. That has to keep her happy. Right? Right????
[Image via Flickr - Christopher]
