r with happiness.

No, you're probably not getting that coffee mug. That's right.

I like to start with a controversial tweet by a young man I started following recently, Jay Cartier, C-A-R-T-I-E-R. He says some nice provocative Twitter stuff. So here was his tweet today: "Happy wife equals miserable life because dedicating yourself to making someone happy is how you create terrible relationships. A good relationship comes from starting happy and sharing that happiness with your partner. It's your responsibility to choose happiness."

What do you think? How many of you would agree with "happy wife, happy life"? Has that worked for any of you? No.

Let me give you another take on what it takes to be happy. This one from also Twitter user Joe Manico, who tweets this in response. He said, "We're thinking all successful long-term relationships are a result of mutual application of the Stockholm syndrome." Do you know about the Stockholm syndrome? It's whether you're a prisoner and you start to relate to your captors. So you become friends with the people who are imprisoning you, and you think that's natural and good and all feels right. That basically is cognitive dissonance. The only thing that makes a happy marriage is cognitive dissonance. You have to convince yourself that you must be there for some good reason because you are there, and you consider yourself rational. Let's see if I'm rational, and I'm in this marriage thing, and I'm rational. Logically, I'm happy. You see how that works? You actually, your brain will actually tell you to be happy because it can't understand the situation any other way. Well, you're rational. You chose to do this. You keep choosing to do it. You must like it. And then your brain tells you you like it. There's definitely some of that.

All right, but I saw somebody else mocking the "happy wife, happy life" under the theory that there's no such thing as making your wife happy. Who would agree with that? That there's no such thing as making your wife happy. So yes, it might be theoretically true. It might be theoretically true that a happy wife would make a happy life, but you can't get there. That's like an unclimbable mountain.

I would like to describe the process of making your wife happy as trying to dry the ocean with a towel. Just let you sleep on that one a little bit. It's like drying the ocean with a towel because I don't know about you, but I feel like women come up with new problems if you solve the old one. Am I the only one who thinks that? I remember when I was young and dumb and I thought if you solved somebody else's problem that they wouldn't have any problems. I actually believe that. I believe, okay, how many problems do you have? Three. All right, let's work on these three problems. We'll take care of these three big problems. You're good. Nope. Turns out three new problems. Coincidentally didn't see it coming. But then you say, all right, well three more problems. I didn't see these coming, but once the first three are solved and the next three, that'll be six solved problems. Pretty good. After that? How's that go?

All right, here's my take on marriage. Marriage works when the right two people get married, and that's it. There's nothing else. Because the right two people will do the right things under the right circumstances, and the wrong people will do the wrong thing under every circumstance, and then that doesn't work. And I think the odds of finding one functional person who would be like a good mate, it's kind of low for everybody. It's just kind of low. Even if you have a lot of buying power, like you're the kind of person who can really get the mate that you want, you know, you've got all kinds of options, you're still guessing because people turn into different creatures the day you're married.

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