A new study found that men who admitted to being unhappy with their married lives are still satisfied overall, as long as their wives are happy with the relationship.
Study author Deborah Carr from Rutgers University and Vicki Freedman from the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research looked at the data of 394 couples, aged 60 and above, who were part of the ISR Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a national panel study of a representative sample of U.S. families.
The participants were provided with diaries to record their activities for the past 24 hours, along with the emotions they felt while doing those activities. They also rated six questions regarding their marital quality. The items asked how much they could open up to their spouse and how much their spouse appreciated them, argued with them, understood how they felt, made them feel tense and got on their nerves.
Both husbands and wives rated an average of 5 out of 6 for general life satisfaction and 5 for happiness. Most men also saw their relationships more positively than their wives. Life satisfaction of the husbands, on the other hand, is dependent on their wives' happiness and perception of the relationship.
"Overall life satisfaction for an unhappily married man depends on how his wife describes their relationship. If she describes their marriage as higher quality, his life satisfaction is buoyed - even if he gives the marriage a less glowing assessment," said Freedman in a university news release.
Keeping the wife happy in marriage is crucial, according to researchers, as women provide more emotional and practical support in a relationship.
"So even an unhappily married man may receive benefits from the marriage that enhance his overall well-being," Carr said.
This study is the first to look at the impact of marital quality on the overall life satisfaction of older couples. Researchers believe that the results of the study can help provide additional information on how marriage affects care-giving and the decision-making of couples later in life.
This study was published in the Journal of Marriage and Family.
