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I would zero in on neuroticism. Women are just predisposed to be unhappy. Period. Their husband is probably the adult they are around the majority of the time, and they just decide he must be at fault for all their negative feelings. It's neuroticism looking for blind justifications. Our culture which just blames men for everything only justifies and amplifies this impulse.
I've heard not a few stories of women who buy into this narrative and throw away their husband, which was probably the best thing they had going for them. Then when someone better fails to come along, or fails to commit, they wonder what the fuck they were thinking. Why did they do what they did? It's like they were in a trance.
Women live in a world where they are told from the youngest age that their every negative emotion is the fault of men. It's only natural they toss out their husbands when the going gets rough.
Ah, another borderline comment makes it into the mod queue.
So far this has, adjusts glasses, two reports for antagonism.
I personally disagree with that assessment, pointing out perceived moral failings or group differences (at least in a negative light) is in itself not something against the rules.
However, I think the sweeping proclamations about:
Comes across as somewhat uncharitable, but once again, not to the extent I feel I have to do anything about it. I would, of course, prefer you extended more charity, maybe if you had tried to justify your observations (or at least caveat them).*
Consider this an unnecessarily verbose way of saying this comment is slightly subpar, just a tad bit more than I am okay with leaving entirely unaddressed. Or to the people who did report it, please don't bother if it's this mild.
*(A quick Google search tells me it's probably factually incorrect, in that the papers I saw showed a rather significant finding of greater life satisfaction/happiness in women than men, but I don't think the mods are here to adjudicate matters of fact that don't hinge around the rules of The Motte itself)
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It's seldom the case that failure of a marriage responsibly falls on only one of the parties involved. But I think a world in which marriages are at least 'partly' arranged fare better than the ones predicated entirely on the ephemeral attractions of two consenting adults.
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Lesbian marriages have the highest divorce rates so it goes. Also, their stated reasons for divorce are just the same. I’m not sure about gay men.
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Kinda borne out by the stats indicating that women are just less happy in general than decades past AND having higher rates of mental health disorders despite marriage rates going down over that time.
Indeed, this is pretty decent evidence in favor of "women are harder to please" hypotheses. Almost every metric that feeds into human happiness has improved over the last 100 years, and yet women as a class appear just as discontent with the situation as ever, if not moreso.
If women are more prone to unhappiness in general, the ones in a marriage can attribute that to their husbands, but the ones out of it can attribute it to [Capitalism/Climate Change/Astrological Signs].
https://neurosciencenews.com/women-happiness-psychology-23862/
https://www.nber.org/papers/w29893
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Our culture also just generally validates neuroses. The likelihood of being told, "your feelings are valid" is much higher than being told, "well, tough shit, everyone feels that way sometimes".
I do feel like all analysis that depends on self-reported happiness needs to deal with the fact that reporting that one is happy is (for someone sympathetic) often a strategic mistake.
Say you're unhappy and, if you are loved, the next question that comes is "what can I do to make things better for you?" Say you're happy and, since you're already okay, you get passed over. Saying you're happy is saying that you don't want free stuff. Some can be naïve enough to not get it or principled enough to refuse it, but what we incentivize, we get more of, and here it's "self-reported unhappiness."
I actually think it's worth challenging the idea that there aren’t more important things in the world sometimes than individual happiness.
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I think you’re both right- everyone in our culture could stand to hear ‘yeah, sometimes it sucks, deal with it’ a little more often but men currently hear it at least a little bit and women very rarely do.
It's worse. Stoicism is now considered toxic.
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