How to Be a
Happily Married Man

Being a happily married man should not be so hard. It is your right to be happy. You were not born to live out your life in a miserable marriage waiting to die.

You can tell if a man will have a good life being married by how often he does what he wants, by the types of things he buys and by how he is living his life.

Your life, even if you are married, is your own. If you want it to be great, it must be crafted by you, worked on by you, and set up by you.

This is what I was doing in the years leading up to my marriage.

When I proposed to my girlfriend on a mountaintop in Glacier National Park, all this started to change for me.

By the time we were married instead of being a happily married man in charge of my life, my life was not my own any more.

At that time in my life I was on top of the world. I was in great shape. I was making a good income and had plenty of money in savings, stocks, bonds and mutual funds. I had no consumer debt. I even had a 3 year old Honda Accord car all paid off. I was doing what I wanted. I lifted weights. I went for walks and hikes. I went skiing. I spent time with friends. I spent time with family. I went on vacations. I went out every weekend. I went out to eat. I was able to fairly easily meet, go out with and seduce girls. The previous 4 or 5 years were the best of my life. I was in charge of my life, living large, having fun and doing as much of what I wanted as possible.

I met my future wife during this time. I just thought that this girl is so great, it seems so right. I will just add a great girl to my life. I will continue to do what I want, I will just add her. I thought I will be a happily married man with her.

But that is not what happened. She took over. Within a short period of time, nothing I did was what I wanted.

That is the lesson.

If you actually study married couples, what they do and don't do, you will see that the men in that relationship are only a happily married man if the majority of the time they are doing what they want.

A good marriage is not the old saying, if mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy. That is the wrong way to look at it. It is really, if daddy is happy, everyone is happy. You will not be a happily married man without doing things that make you happy.

This, of course, is not what you have been led to believe. We have been fed a pack of lies so long that we actually believe it.

We are led to believe that the husband needs to put his wife up on a pedestal and make her dreams come true.

We are told it only matters what your wife wants.

We are told to say yes dear, and you're right dear.

We are told it is our responsibility to work on the honey do list in our precious limited free time.

All of this is garbage.

Deep down, every man knows this is true. It is just hidden. It is covered.

When you see a happily married man, look deeper. Why is he happy? What is it about his life that is making him happy?

Is is because he is catering to every whim of his wife? Does he drop everything and do for her? Does he spend all his free time working around the house and doing chores and errands? Does he wear what his wife says? Does he do what his wife tells him? Does he even have a part of the house that is his alone to decorate as he wants and is a sanctuary?

No, it is none of those things.

That is why the older generation tends to have better marriages. Those men are more likely to have a life where the man does what he wants. Those older men are more likely to be a happily married man because they are doing things to make them happy and their wives are fine with this.

You will see that he is doing what he wants to do most of the time.

I used to make lists of all the married men I knew to see why they seemed like such a happily married man. I was doing this to compare why I was not happy and to determine why my life sucked and their lives seemed so good.

And no, you cannot just say something stupid, like, well, just be happy with what you have. That is just a stupid saying, said by morons.

Getting back to the lists.

The common feature of the list was that men on it were happy with their lives. And the reason is that they were doing what they wanted to do. They were a happily married man because they were doing what they wanted.

That's it.

They were doing what they wanted to do. They were not doing what their wives wanted them to do.

When I pointed this out to my wife, she would not consider it. She said those wives "let" their husbands do too much. She was just so scornful of this idea.

But, this is the reason a man will stay with a woman forever. If she does not stand in the way of what he wants to do. She has to surrender to what he wants.

Most of the time, part of what he wants will be to take care of his wife in a manner to her liking.

That is really the key to a great marriage. The wife will not stand in the way of what the man wants. The best marriages are where the wife is actually helping the man get what he wants.

The worst marriages are where the wife does not help a man get what he wants, where she is hurting her husband.

That is the type of marriage I had. My wife blocked my every move and questioned everything I did. She just could not let me do what I had to do and wanted to do. Trying to do just a little bit of what I wanted took so much effort and energy to convince her to let me. Even after I did what I wanted to behind her back, she would just make my life miserable for weeks and months after.

I just did for her. But no matter how much I did for her, it was not enough.

She actually talked about an older married couple she knew who she thought had a great marriage. She said the woman told her to marry a man who loves you more than you love him. That is the key to a great marriage.

To me, the guy sounded like a moron. Getting orders from his wife, and agreeing with her every word.

That is not much of a life.

The church is not very good at helping men to have a great life. They will usually say something stupid like, the man's job is to love his wife. Like that is going to solve anything. Of course you love your wife. If you don't love her, leave.

If you let your wife take over your life, you will not love her for it. You will grow to resent her. You will sink deeper and deeper into a miserable life. You will not really even understand why. You will not be a happily married man you will be a miserable man.

But now you know.

Your life is the most important thing in the world to you. Your wife is not the most important thing to you, you are the most important thing to you.

If your wife makes doing what you want to do impossible or so difficult that you do not to go through the massive effort it takes, then you need to leave her. She should not stand in your way.

Ideally you want a woman who will help you in this. But at least you want a woman who understands your need to do what you want to do.

You should not have to convince her to let you do any of this. You should not have to domineer and force her to let you either. You should not have to lie and go behind her back. You should not have to manipulate. You should not have to do a bunch of things for her and then she will let you do what you want.

Your needs and desires must be first, last and everything in between.

You would naturally want to take care of your wife in a manner that she finds wonderful. If you do not want to do this, then you have made a bad choice in either the woman you married or even if you really want to be married.

You may need to keep trying before you get to second marriage success. But it is your life. If you make a mistake, or many, you have to keep trying to make it right.

You need to imagine how you want your life to be. Imagine how great it is. Think of what type of lifestyle you want to live. Think of how you want to be a happily married man and how much you want to be satisfied with your life.

In my married life it was rare when my wife and I agreed. I was thinking that I would tell her what I was going to do and wanted to do and she would just say, sounds good, I will help you. I at least needed to hear that she would not stand in my way or at least say, let me know if I can help.

Instead I got was, what do you want to do that for? That sounds like a dumb idea. No, you are not going to do that. I am not going to let you do that. You can't do that. You did that last year, you are not going to do that this year. You can't do that, you need to help me do this.

Looking back at it now, I am just amazed at what I subjected myself to and for so long. But at the time it seemed like that is what I should do. I was thinking it was my duty to do what my wife said. I bought into the garbage thinking that has infected far too many men.

The garbage thinking that in order to be a happily married man you have to only to please your wife and do what she says.

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