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Why aren't women happy???

Happiness is not judged by one's gender.

Unless one is a female, of course.
 
rivrrat said:
Easiest question ever. Why aren't women happy?

Men.
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You women do have it tough. You have to lower your expectations drastically to find an acceptable man, then spend your life discovering all his shortcomings that you didn't see at first..
We men, OTOH, lower our expectations gradually, over time. By the time we figure it out that it just isn't going to get any better, we are too beaten down to do the one thing that will make our women happy, buy a big life insurance policy and then go "have an accident" on the freeway..:2razz:
 
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Johnny said:
I think society is harder on men though.

I believe for the most part a stay at home wife or mother is socially accepted and respected whereas a stay at home husband or dad is considered a loser.
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or does that reflect YOUR view? i don't consider anybody's life choices my business.
 
Bodhisattva said:
What is the deal? Women today are getting all of the choices that their mothers fought for...so why are women tending to be less happy and men are becoming happier?

"As the ERA woke women up, I remember that initial thrill of empowerment sweeping over us," she said. "But Shannon's generation has had to face all the implications we didn't fully anticipate, and I see how incredibly hard it can be. I don't know anybody who would want to go back to the way it was, but I think those high expectations are taking a toll on women's happiness."

The Happiness Quotient / Do high expectations and a plethora of choices make modern women miserable?

"Perhaps the most persuasive explanation for the happiness gap echoes Lisa Boucher's observation: Having choices means that women actually must choose. "

"I want to preface this by saying that you're catching me on a really crazed week. I know I'm lucky to have a beautiful, happy kid; a great job; a great husband who pitches in," she acknowledges. "But here's where I am right at this moment: Last night I just turned to him and said, 'You know what, I'm not happy in my life.

" 'I've lost my joy.' "

The Happiness Quotient / Do high expectations and a plethora of choices make modern women miserable?

Why is this?
Why is the more and more common?
Why Aren't Women Happy?

I hear more and more of this...

Having watched her own parents divorce when she was 13, forcing her homemaker mother to get a job, Boucher vowed that she would never be felled by a similar fate. "I swore that I would never depend on any man, that I would establish my own successful career, that I wouldn't let anybody into my life that much," she says. "But now I have somebody to share my life with, and what I really want most is to be able to stay home and spend time with my daughter.

"So we women broke out of the little boxes that defined us, and now it seems like everybody's trying to get back in there. I'm trying to get back in."

It is sad. I am not sure why society feels that it has to "evolve" into something...does it? Where are we going? What are we leaving behind? Who benifits? Who is being hurt.
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If people couldnt convince others that they were miserable, how would they sell books, articles, programs, etc???

Connie Podesta says it best...we arent happy because our parents have spent their lives trying to make us 'happy' instead of teaching us how to be strong responsible, driven, personally motivated beings with a good work ethic and a strong sense of positive self esteem, self worth, and self value.
 
Originally Posted by Catz
You understand that this is confirmation bias. You are paying attention to the data that confirms your existing views, and ignoring additional information. That's no way to formulate a logical conclusion.
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I know many happy working women as well. Each individual is unique and no generalization can be made, I was simply making an observation.

I"m glad you live in NZ and not the U.S. The last thing I want is to see my home's value drop by a considerable margin. I've made a significant investment in my home, and have paid additional dollars into my mortgage each month to increase my equity in my house, which now is 3 times what I owe on the home.
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What does me living abroad have to do with housing prices in the USA?

I have a feeling that you would only feel this way if you didn't already own a home. The last thing any homeowner wants is to see the value of their home decrease.
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I don’t want home owner’s homes to devalue; I want housing prices to be more reasonable. Prices reflect what people are willing to pay, and that often sees home owner’s going into debt by a substantial margin. I worked in real estate for a bit, and the first lesson was that people will pay more than they can afford for a home almost every single time. That is ridiculous. All that does is drive up housing prices and make homes more unaffordable for people who have less.
 
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I've been happy all my life. I'm a fundamentally happy person; I've never known depression, although I had a glimpse of it now and then back in my druggie days; the brief chemical-induced depression that followed a high was enough to show me what some people deal with all the time, and it made me empathetic to it. I once described the feeling as "If somebody walked through the door and shot me in the head right now, I wouldn't care. If somebody walked through the door right now and handed me a check for ten million dollars, I also wouldn't care."

Anyway, yeah; other than that, I've always been pretty content.
The only thing that makes me unhappy is worry about my kids. Anxiety about them.
And this is not new; it started when they were born. Although it's gotten worse and worse.
I used to think once they were grown it would stop, or taper off. It hasn't.
That's the only sadness in my life: the fact that I can't ensure my kids' safety and happiness.
Nobody can ensure anybody's safety and happiness, especially not another adult's, and I know that; intellectually, I know that.
But it doesn't stop me from being sad that I can't.
This is a cruel world. It really is. At least, that's what I think sometimes.
It's no place for children, no matter how we might try to create little enclaves of safety and kindness for them in it.
It's insanity to bring people into this world who you will love this much, and then send them out into it and just. Not know. What's going to happen to them.

That's my only sadness, and I'm happy when I can put it out of my mind.
Unfortunately, that's never for very long.

Maybe women are less happy because they're the ones who feel this parenting thing the most. Mothers seem to bear the brunt of it, in many families. The anxiety, I mean.
Although men can certainly be effected too; I know my dad suffered over me the way I suffer over my kids.
The irony is that while he was doing that, I was having a blast and not suffering at all, and completely oblivious to his pain.
I try to keep that in mind, and hope that the same is true for my kids: that my suffering for them does not mean that they are suffering. That it's all in my mind.
 
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Bodhisattva said:
I don’t want home owner’s homes to devalue; I want housing prices to be more reasonable.
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You can't have one without the other.

Prices reflect what people are willing to pay, and that often sees home owner’s going into debt by a substantial margin. I worked in real estate for a bit, and the first lesson was that people will pay more than they can afford for a home almost every single time.
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I didn't. For the most part, I live within my means. I drive an old car, and will have my house paid off in about 5 years. I don't live in a luxurious house, I live in a rather modest house in a nice neighborhood with good schools. I paid a reasonable amount for my house, and it has doubled in value over 11 years, even considering the drop in the market. That is a huge investment for me, and represents a significant percentage of my monthly income. In essence, i've sacrificed other things to have a decent house in a safe neighborhood. I would hate to lose the money I have invested, just because some people feel entitled to have a house for less than what the market will bear. Not everyone is going to be able to afford a house. I think we learned that in the past 3 years.
 
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I've never wanted a house.
For whatever bizarre reason (mostly convenience; I didn't drive until recently), I've always preferred to live downtown, and only the affluent can afford houses here.
I like apartments. They're cozy. I feel safe in them. When things break, people come and fix them for free. When your apartment gets too "lived-in", you can just move out and get a new one.
Life doesn't seem long enough to bother with the permanence of a house. At least that's always been my rationale.
Now that we're getting older and the kids are grown, we're considering investing in a condo at some point in the next decade.
 
VanceMack said:
Connie Podesta says it best...we arent happy because our parents have spent their lives trying to make us 'happy' instead of teaching us how to be strong responsible, driven, personally motivated beings with a good work ethic and a strong sense of positive self esteem, self worth, and self value.
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exactly. 'happiness' isn't a goal you can shoot for, only a by-product you hope for.
 
cpwill said:
exactly. 'happiness' isn't a goal you can shoot for, only a by-product you hope for.
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I don't know; I've had years-long stretches of "happiness", or at least contentment.
Basically, any time nothing bad is happening, or seems imminently about to happen, I am content. To me, contentment and happiness are the same.

Ironically, though, these are periods I don't remember well, in retrospect. They blur in my memory. I only remember that nothing much happened, and I was happy. I remember the hard times more. The hard times also seem to be my most productive times; they are the times that force me to stretch beyond my comfort zone, and actually grow as a human being.
 
1069 said:
I don't know; I've had years-long stretches of "happiness", or at least contentment.
Basically, any time nothing bad is happening, or seems imminently about to happen, I am content. To me, contentment and happiness are the same.

Ironically, though, these are periods I don't remember well, in retrospect. They blur in my memory. I only remember that nothing much happened, and I was happy. I remember the hard times more. The hard times also seem to be my most productive times; they are the times that force me to stretch beyond my comfort zone, and actually grow as a human being.
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Getting out of your comfort zone is a good thing. Of the siblings in my family, only 2 of us have somehow been motivated to do more, be more, etc. than our parents. The others "settled", and long term, that has to be extremely boring....
I don't think you can be bored and be happy at the same time.
 
The Giant Noodle said:
I didnt mean all women by thw way. But a hell of a LOT of em. The younger women seem to want to have a wedding but not so much a marriage. :roll:
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I said that over 15 years ago. I said wedding whatever, I don't want an awesome wedding. I want an awesome marriage. I don't want to go into debt for that ONE BIG DAY, that's stoopid.
 
BDBoop said:
I said that over 15 years ago. I said wedding whatever, I don't want an awesome wedding. I want an awesome marriage. I don't want to go into debt for that ONE BIG DAY, that's stoopid.
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Totally agree; courthouse wedding both times. First time in cut-offs and a teeshirt, second time in my work uniform, on my lunch break. Only two guests at this last one: my dad and his dad.
To me, the wedding ceremony itself was just a piece of bureaucratic business to take care of, no different than getting my driver's license renewed.
Hey, I never claimed to be a romantic. :lol:
 
BDBoop said:
I said that over 15 years ago. I said wedding whatever, I don't want an awesome wedding. I want an awesome marriage. I don't want to go into debt for that ONE BIG DAY, that's stoopid.
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:shock: *Putting arm around Boop* :)
 
1069 said:
Actually, I have it on good authority that she prefers Doctor Tutsi.
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Shouldn't I know that name? I mean, if that's who or what I prefer.
 
BDBoop said:
Shouldn't I know that name? I mean, if that's who or what I prefer.
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Oh, I'm being very obscure.
Oftentimes on this forum, I amuse myself by telling jokes that no one except me is likely to get.
 
Options are good. Expectations are another matter.

A lie was told: "You can have it all/be it all. Supermom, corporate ladder-climbing professional, superwife, social community leader, etc etc."

There might be some people who can maintain that intensity and not burn out, but most can't. Most people are happier when things a little simpler, a little less stressed, a little less hectic.

End result? Women who choose to be stay-at-home moms sometimes think they're missing out on all the satisfaction of a career outside the home.

Career women may think they're missing out on the mommy scene.

Those who try to do it all miss out on a lot of sleep and get extra wrinkles.


Solution? Do your thing, Be content and quit worrying about what others think. Be satisfied with a little bit less than "all".
 
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