Patriarchal Blogger: Happiness Is a Choice

Oh, Lori Alexander.

Steve Harvey shared a clip about a woman asking Steve about her boyfriend having a beard. One of first things out of her mouth was, “I think my happiness should be his priority.” I believe that many women go into marriage with this same mindset. I sure did! I thought my husband’s priority should be to make me happy and when I quickly found out that this was not true, I was angry and continually frustrated with him.

This is not a recipe for a good marriage, women. It is not your husband’s responsibility to make you happy. No one can make you happy because happiness is a choice regardless of one’s circumstances. This attitude of it being the husband’s priority to make his wife happy comes out of the “Happy Wife, Happy Life” mantra that is widely believed these days. Again, it’s not a husband’s responsibility to keep his wife happy. This puts way too big of a burden on the men.

I don’t want to get lost in the weeds here, so let’s bear in mind that this all started with a woman saying she thinks her boyfriend should factor in her desires when deciding to have a beard. That’s where the idea of happiness came in—she said her husband should base his personal grooming decisions on what makes her happy.

What does Lori say of such things in other posts?

Most men love long hair. Ask your husband how he likes your hair best and wear it that way. I remember in high school some guys were sitting near me and were bemoaning the fact that most girls go off to college and cut their hair short which I am sure is from feminist influence. Long hair on a young woman is beautiful. Yes, I know that some women can’t grow their hair long or they just look much better with shorter hair but make sure you are trying to please your husband with the way you look. If he loves your long hair, don’t cut it!

Look, it’s right there: “Ask your husband how he likes your hair best and wear it that way.” And again: “make sure you are trying to please your husband with the way you look. If he loves your hair, don’t cut it!” She’s not shy about what she’s saying here. She doesn’t have a problem with one partner basing their personal grooming habits on what makes the other partner happy—provided it’s a man’s happiness we’re talking about. 

But let’s go back to the OP. After deriding this young woman’s desire that her husband factor in her happiness when deciding whether or not to wear a beard, Lori goes on:

Joy comes from within. Every day, you have the opportunity to choose to accept your life and its circumstances and rejoice in spite of them or be critical and complaining. You can choose to be thankful and dwell on the good in your life or you can choose to be unthankful and dwell on the negative. You can choose to dwell on the good in your husband or you can dwell on the negative. These are all your choice.

There’s an element of this that I find myself agreeing with: if you look to your partner to make you happy, you will probably eventually run into problems. No one person can meet all of another person’s needs. Similarly, if you expect your partner to constantly base their behavior solely on what will make you happy, your marriage will not be a healthy one—your partner, like you, needs autonomy and space.

However. This isn’t actually what Lori is saying. She is saying that women’s happiness comes solely from deciding to be happy. While there is again some truth to the idea that our internal thought processes are important—I am not a therapist, so I’m not going to try to hash what that is out—Lori’s absolutism creates some very serious problems. The reality is that other people’s actions do affect us. The idea that happiness only comes from within can be used to keep women with partners who are uncaring or outright abusive.

I’ve had these conversations with friends with uncaring or abusive partners, and one thing I’ve told them is that they are worth more than that. They matter, their happiness matters, they deserve to be with someone who cares about them—not someone who takes them for granted, neglects them, or mistreats them.

While you shouldn’t expect your partner to meet all of your needs, you should be able to expect them to meet some of your needs. Or, you know, to at least care about your needs. This is how marriage is supposed to work! Also, having a caring, kind partner improves a person’s wellbeing in a real and measurable way.

Lori decides that none of that matters. She argues that women need to suck it up and find their happiness within, their partners be damned.

What would it take for your husband to make you happy any ways? If he were perfect and did everything perfect? This isn’t ever going to happen because your husband isn’t perfect and neither are you. Can you imagine having the load on your shoulders of it being your responsibility to keep your husband happy?

Wait, what now?!

But this is precisely what Lori teaches!

Check this out, from a post titled “Advice to a New Wife“:

Never say no to sex. It’s the glue that will bond you together through thick and thin. Even on the days where you’re not into it, put your husband’s needs above your own. You’ll be glad you did in the long run.

Over and over again she tells women it’s their responsibility to set their own needs aside and focus only and always on keeping their husbands happy! If this were pointed out to Lori, she would probably say she urges wives to keep their husbands happy but not to expect their husbands to keep them happy because women were created to be a “help meet” to men, and not vice versa. I’m an egalitarian, so I don’t care. All I see is a double standard.

Should people base their personal grooming habits on what makes their partner happy? In part, yes—and in part, no. Our partner’s happiness should be something we care about, value, and factor into every decision we make—but we still exist as autonomous selves separate from our partners. Our partner’s happiness shouldn’t be the only thing we think about when choosing our grooming habits—but it should also be a thing we do think about.

Honestly, the dichotomy in which this is presented puzzles me—in my own personal grooming habits, it makes me happy to make my partner happy because I love him and he loves me. That doesn’t mean I don’t ever do things just for me—I do. But it’s hard for me to imagine not wanting to please my husband, because seeing him happy makes me happy. The reverse is also true: when I notice my husband’s appearance, or some personal grooming thing he has done that he thinks I will like, it makes me happy, and my happiness in turn makes him happy.

That Lori doesn’t realize that happiness and satisfaction and caring can become a feedback loop within a healthy marriage makes me think she’s never experienced the beauty of a strong, mutual, attentive partnership.

No wonder she has convinced herself happiness is the result of personal choice.

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