I’m Andrea Giles and you’re listening to the Heal from Infidelity podcast,
episode number 184, The Hidden Cost of Happy Wife, Happy Life.

Hello and welcome to the Heal from Infidelity podcast for courageous women
learn not only to heal from their spouse’s betrayal, but to become the
boldest, truest, most decisive and confident versions of themselves ever.
If you know there’s more for you than the life you’re currently living but
don’t quite know how to get there, you are in the right place. Stick around
to learn how to create a life that will knock your own socks off. Is it
possible? It is, and I’m here to show you how I’m your host, Andrea Giles.
Are you ready? Let’s dive in.

(00:50):

Hello everybody. Welcome back to another episode. Today we are going to be
talking about the saying that I’m sure you’ve all heard, happy wife, happy
life. You’ve probably heard it many times. Today. We’re going to debunk it.
Talk about why it’s not a great statement and what’s actually better. If
you have ever subscribed to this thought that happy wife, happy life, stick
around you came by it, honestly, maybe you modeled it. Maybe you thought
that that was the best thing. If I could just get what I want, if my
husband would just do what I want, then I’ll be happy and I’ll be well. Or
if you are on the other side of that, if you’re the husband and you try to
just make your wife happy and it has backfired, this episode is for you.
Alright, before we dive in, I want to say thank you for all of you who have
been going in and reviewing and rating the podcast.

(01:49):

I appreciate it so, so much. I love being able to offer this podcast for
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do that helps me to be able to continue doing this is go in and rate it,
leave a five star review and go in and actually review it. It just takes a
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knows it’s you. It’s very easy and it helps tremendously in growing the
reach for people who need. This lets people know that this is a place to
listen, to dig in, so thank you. This is something that you can do for me.
I appreciate it so much and you’re then doing it for all the other people
who have yet to find this podcast, so thank you so much.

(02:40):

Alright, let’s dive in. Happy wife, happy life. Okay. How many of you have
ever shut your mouth, bit your tongue? Stop talking to avoid a fight, shut
it down. I don’t want to fight, so I’m just not going to say anything, and
then later on you feel even further away from your partner, so you are
already feeling uncomfortable. You are going to say something, decided not
to, and then later on you feel even more distant from them. This is a
symptom of this kind of thought process of just keep it happy, keep it
surface level and everything will be just fine. It’s a lie. Okay, this
phrase, happy wife, happy life. We’re going to be talking a little bit more
about where it came from, but it has become culturally accepted as solid
advice. You see bumper stickers, you see t-shirts like people praising it,
like it’s this super noble thing of look at me, this is the kind of spouse
I am, happy wife, happy life, and it often is delivered with maybe a smile
or a smirk, but with serious implications.

(03:49):

Behind this phrase is often a relationship full of suppression, resentment,
emotional distance, people pleasing and false harmony, not peace. This
happy life is not actually real. It is pretend. So first of all, where did
this come from? It looks like in doing preparation for this episode that
this phrase came out and popularized in the 1950s to the 1960s during a
time when gender roles were quite rigid and quite stereotyped, it became a
defense mechanism or a coping strategy rather than a real, practical,
useful, healthy strategy. Just give her what she wants and we can all get
on with our lives. Look at what I’ve given you. Look at the life I’ve given
you. What do you have to complain about? So going back to those days, the
fifties and sixties, at that time it was more common for women to be home,
to be home with kids, to be taking care of things on the home front, not
pursuing careers but being provided for, and so in that way it could be
said, look, I’ve provided all of this.

(05:06):

Look, you don’t have to work. Look, I’ve given you such a comfortable life.
You should be happy and in reality, what we know now is how many women were
just kind of dying a slow death and how many women are still dying a slow
death and how many men are as well. It goes both ways. What this really
implies, and part of why it’s so dangerous is because the statement happy
wife, happy life implies that the emotional wellbeing of an entire
household rest solely on one person’s happiness. Have you ever heard the, if
mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy? I am sure you have. What this means
and what this teaches the family is that we’re all here to prop mom up and
to make her happy not to upset mom, and as long as mom’s happy, we can all
be okay. We can all rest.

(06:00):

We are all fine. This creates a lot of issues. The man’s role here becomes
that of a peacekeeper or an appeaser, not an equal partner, and the women’s
role becomes emotionally overburdened. If she is the thermostat for
everyone’s mood, that’s a problem, right? It means she’s not allowed to
have emotions, she’s not allowed to express sadness or frustration or even
anger, and nobody likely asked her if she wants that responsibility. Part of
the problem is that it trains people, especially men, to avoid conflict
rather than engaging in repair, it subtly encourages dishonesty and
emotional withdrawal. I’m just not going to say, I’m just not going to talk
about it, or I might dip my toe in it and see how it goes, and if it
doesn’t go well, I’m never going to say anything again. Okay? Real
partnership isn’t about keeping someone happy. It’s about mutual truth,
respect, and resilience.

(07:09):

Now, I want to talk about something that I see sometimes with my clients.
Sometimes I do have clients where on either side, the female side, the male
side of things in those traditional roles that one or the other might speak
up and might want more, might want better connection, want to work through
things, go get help, things like that, and often if the other person
becomes really unregulated in that request, the person asking shuts down,
the person asking says, oh, this is too scary. Nevermind. This person’s
never going to listen, and what I see is that sometimes that person
withdraws and that person then sometimes has people that are interested in
closeness and intimacy and talking and giving and receiving, and they can
step right into having affairs. It goes both ways. It’s not just people who
are trying to disengage from relationships that have affairs.

(08:11):

Sometimes it’s people who have desperately tried to engage, been met with
seemingly a brick wall, lots of emotion, lots of shutdown, and their way of
coping with that is going in other directions. They often don’t plan it
that they’re going to go cheat. Sometimes it just happens and they feel
something that they haven’t felt for a while, right? All of this is a
recipe for disaster for everyone involved. Real partnership isn’t about
keeping someone happy. It really isn’t. It’s not. It’s about mutual truth,
respect, and resilience. Nowhere in there is the word happy, okay? Where
happiness comes from, where real peace comes from is when you know that
there’s real mutual truth, respect and resilience. Emotional resilience,
emotional bandwidth between each person. Emotional maturity. What this
happy wife, happy life encourages is dishonesty and emotional withdrawal
and breaking down of trust. I can’t tell the truth here.

(09:20):

I can’t say how I actually feel. Happy wife, happy life is often just a
cute euphemism for fear based silence. It’s like we’re going to put this
cute little bow on top of this and we’re going to pretend like this is good
when Right under the surface is a lack of courage, a lack of truth telling,
a lot of fear, not good. Alright, let’s talk about the cost of avoiding
truth. So many partners adopt a mentality that is, don’t rock the boat.
Conflict becomes something to dodge, not a signal of something worth
exploring. Okay? I want to talk about this piece a little bit. How many of
you, when you are looking at a situation, maybe it’s with your spouse,
maybe it’s with a family member, where you know that there are some things
that you’re feeling unsettled with. You want to talk about it, but you know
that it could turn into something that feels like conflict and so you don’t
bring it up.

(10:24):

A little mindset shift here that can be so beneficial is going, what if
That feeling, that feeling of fear like that there’s something here and you
are putting it off, putting it off. What if it is a signal to pay attention
to that there’s something here worth exploring that this relationship
matters enough to tell the truth. Some common dynamics are, I didn’t say
anything because I didn’t want to upset her. He’s not honest with me because
he’s afraid of my reaction. We don’t fight, but we don’t talk about anything
important either, and the second one here, he or she is not honest with me
because he or she is afraid of my reaction. You know what? This can be a
real issue if somebody has something honest to say, even if they’re saying
it in a very respectful way, if the other person takes it personally and
starts on the defense immediately, it’s not going to create a space for the
other person to want to come back to want to try that again.

(11:32):

It requires both people to grow their own emotional maturity to go, oh,
this is so uncomfortable and I care about my spouse and want to hear what
my spouse has to say, so I’m going to manage all of this anxiety and shame
or whatever comes up for you inside and hear what my spouse has to say,
right? What this leads to these dynamics is politeness over passion.
Everything stays nice, but there is no spark. There is no spark. I’m going
to be talking in the future a little bit more about the importance of
polarity in relationship. The yin, the yang, the masculine, the feminine.
This kills its stone. Dead politeness kills it, stone dead. It kills the
spark. There is no masculine leading out. There is no receiving from the
feminine side of that masculine strength. It’s just kind of this platonic
dead feeling, and I want to be clear here.

(12:34):

This is not necessarily just between men and women in any relationship, in
any romantic relationship, no matter the gender. This feeling of polarity
traits that are a little bit more seen as masculine traits that are a
little bit more seen as feminine, really people being who they are in those
ways, that is what creates this amazing polarity that is that opposites
attract fire, okay? Politeness over passion kills it dead. Pretending over
presence kills it dead. This means each person hides their real feelings to
maintain false peace. This is not sustainable. You will suffocate. You’ll
suffocate. You will know it. It will get to a place where you cannot
tolerate it, okay? You can have parallel lives where two people are
functioning side by side. They might look like they’ve got it all, but they
no longer are actually sharing life emotionally or spiritually or really in
any way other than just kind of going through the motions.

(13:38):

These are the ones that you see around town or at church or wherever that
look like. They’ve got it all together and in reality they’re really good
at the image, but they often have no emotional relationship at all. They
each stay in their corners, right? Please know that peacekeeping is not the
same as peacemaking. One. Silence is truth and the other invites it.
Peacekeeping silences truth. Peacemaking invites it by telling the truth.
Okay? Alright. Now let’s talk about codependency and how this shows up in
this kind of dynamic. Codependency often disguises itself as love, care or
devotion, but it’s rooted in fear and emotional fusion. It looks like
dotting, it looks like caring often. A lot of accolades like, oh my gosh,
look at how much that husband does for his wife. Vice versa, but it’s
rooted in fear and emotional fusion. Codependent dynamics look like one
person sacrificing their truth, their needs or boundaries to maintain the
other’s emotional equilibrium.

(14:56):

It looks like the relationship starting to revolve around one partner’s
approval moods or avoidance of conflict. Sometimes somebody will not go
talk to that person because they know that they will spiral, that they have
no emotional maturity, that they’ll spiral for days and that they’re going
to be punished for it so they stay silent. Intimacy gets replaced with
caretaking or managing the other’s emotions because by managing the other’s
emotions, they don’t have to then deal with their own right? If you are
walking on eggshells, you are not in intimacy, you’re in survival. If
you’re listening and you know that you’re walking on eggshells, this is not
real intimacy. This is survival. What are some of the consequences of this?
A loss of self-expression, quiet resentment, building over time, burnout
from emotional over-functioning and sometimes over-functioning in many
ways. Maybe there’s lots of ways you’re over-functioning.

(16:01):

A false sense of control that ultimately leads to rupture sometimes through
emotional shutdown and sometimes through affairs of somebody saying, I got
to get out. I need to escape. What does true intimacy require? True
intimacy is not built on silence or appeasement. It is built on
vulnerability and truth telling. Healthy intimacy looks like mutual honesty,
even when it’s uncomfortable that each person is doing their own work to
become the kind of person that can manage their own reactions, even when
it’s hard, especially when it’s hard. Emotional ownership, meaning this is
what I’m feeling instead of, you made me feel this way, permission to
disappoint. This means trusting that you can tell the truth and your
partner can handle it. All right? This is a huge one, trusting that you can
tell the truth and your partner can handle it. Sometimes we tell each other
things that are disappointing to the other person.

(17:06):

I said, I would do this. I forgot I didn’t do it. I’m telling you. I’m
being honest with you. I know you’re disappointed. This is what I’m going
to do to make it right. Okay? This is honest. Telling the truth of things
that do come up in relationships and trust that the other person isn’t
going to freak out and fly off the handle and yell and scream and make you
suffer for days, right? I want to remind you here that conflict is not the
enemy. Conflict is not the enemy. Disconnection is the enemy. Conflict is
saying, we’re engaged. I care about you. Let’s talk about this. Let’s get to
the bottom of this. Even if we’re messy, if we don’t even know how, what is
actually really dangerous is disconnecting pulling away each going to their
corner, going back to that pretend space, fighting fair, speaking vulnerably
and learning to repair builds trust, not erodes it, and so many of us have
it the other way around.

(18:11):

What does fighting fair mean to you? As you’re listening, what does it mean
to fight fair? What do you think? To me, as I think about fighting fair, I
think like that expression, don’t hit below the belt. We don’t need to get
ugly. We don’t need to call names. We don’t need to call. In every
instance, over the last many years that we’ve been together of times that
something happened that hurt me and sling it at the other person. Fighting
fair means sticking to the issue at hand, talking about the issue at hand.
It doesn’t mean not sharing hurt, right? You listeners, you’ve got some big
hurts, right? Infidelity is probably the or one of the most painful
experiences of your life, okay? So we’re not tiptoeing around that. That is
the reality, and part of this is speaking vulnerably, telling the truth,
and I’ll tell you what, for those of you who are navigating, staying or
going, this is part of how you’re going to know is can I tell the truth and
can they manage their response to my truth?

(19:22):

You need to know this. You need to know this because otherwise you keep
stuffing and stuffing and stuffing until you can’t anymore, and there’s
often a big explosion, okay? Intimacy is built in the moments where truth
is spoken and still held. Isn’t that beautiful? We can still be held by the
other person even when we are sharing a hard truth. It’s built in the
moments where truth is spoken and we are still held, alright? A better
model, honest partnership. We’re going to spend the last few minutes
talking about that. We’re going to dismantle. We’re going to dissolve the
old narrative, happy wife, happy life. We’re going to dismantle, always
keep him happy. We’re going to dismantle, avoiding upsetting him or her at
all costs. The better alternative that maybe you want to tattoo on your
arm, I’m kidding, but that you might want to write somewhere so that you
remember it.

(20:23):

Honest, partner, resilient relationship, honest partner, resilient
relationship. I could add more life-giving, relationship, thriving
relationship, emotional maturity from both sides explodes a relationship in
the best way. Choosing truth over false peace explodes a relationship in
the best way when both people are committed to it. Creating a culture where
disagreement doesn’t threaten the connection is everything. How many of you
feel like if you have a disagreement, your spouse might stonewall you,
might not talk to you, might threaten their connection to you? This is not
love. This is immaturity. This is immaturity. What works better, so much
better is both partners. Creating a culture where there can be a
disagreement. You don’t have to agree and you’re not threatening the
connection where it can be done in a way that’s respectful. You can take a
timeout, you can take a pause, but it’s still sharing your concern and care
for that person even as you care for yourself.

(21:42):

How does one do that? There are relational skills here that make this work.
One differentiation. The ability to hold onto yourself while staying
connected several, several episodes ago. You can go scroll through. I did
an episode called differentiation. It’s all about being able to regulate
yourself, learn how to regulate yourself, especially when you’re not in an
agreement with somebody. You can still stay with yourself and stay
connected to the other person. It means emotional regulation, speaking needs
without blame. These are things that I need, and I’m asking you to meet me
here, but we’re not blaming listening with curiosity instead of
defensiveness. The goal is not to never upset your partner, it’s to build a
relationship where truth can flow and love still holds it all as a solid
container, okay? This container of love, where truth can flow through
freely, that love is big enough to hold it even in the ugly, even in the
uncomfortable, even in the terrifying, okay?

(22:59):

Alright. To recap, happy wife, happy life often creates dishonest,
disconnected, codependent dynamics. It goes both ways. Okay? If we were to
substitute in happy husband, happy life, this is where, look, I’m checking
all the boxes. I do all these things. I take care of the kids, I make good
food, I do this and this. What’s your problem? You should be happy. Look at
all the things I’m taking care of. Look how many things I’m managing for our
home. What more could you want from me? How could you want more? Look at all
the things I’m doing where there’s not the real connection, there’s not the
real truth telling. There’s not the real. I see you, you see me, and we’re
choosing each other, and both people involved likely feel very, very empty.
True partnership is built on truth, differentiation, and a willingness to be
uncomfortable.

(23:58):

Alright, so my invitation for you is to reflect on where you might be
choosing peacekeeping over truth. I want you to ask yourself, what
conversations am I avoiding in the name of harmony? What conversations am I
avoiding in the name of harmony and where might I be choosing peacekeeping
over truth? And I’m going to add one more question here and what is it
costing me? How much is this costing me? Okay. Alright. Thank you for being
here today. I hope this was helpful to you. I invite you to go check out
the show notes where you are going to find a brand new class that I just
put out. It is brand new. I’ve been teasing about it for a couple of weeks
now. It is ready. Go jump into it. It’s going to go into much more depth
about the choices we make around staying or going deep, deep dive into this
topic. You’ll leave with clarity around where you are, around where you
want to go and what the gap is for you. You’ll know. You’ll know what the
gap is and you’ll know what to do about it. Alright, thank you so much.
Check that out in the show notes and I will see you next week. Take care.

(25:17):

Thank you for listening to the Heal from Infidelity podcast. If you would
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Again, it’s https://andreagiles.com/lies-about-infidelity/. I will see you
next time.