Women's Happiness and Wives' Power

We have already seen that women are understood as having been created by God with greater emotionality and less planning ability than men. As part of this, people of both sexes generally imply or directly state that women cannot be happy if they are denied what they want no matter what the difficulties may be in giving it to them. It is not, of course, the view of anyone I talked to that women must or can be happy all the time. Nevertheless, given that it is only in his relations with his wife that a man can hope to express his own emotions more or less freely and only in relations with her that he can expect to get emotional support, this relationship takes on a very special standing for him. It becomes clear, then, why a husband would be willing to take considerable effort to see that his wife is not "unhappy" and why it is to his benefit to have his wife believe that he is "good," "understands what it (i.e., what she wants) means to women," and to show her that he "loves" her.

Men are not equal in their desire to have the opportunity to express themselves with some emotional freedom and/or in their wish to be given emotional support. Similarly, men's assessments of what they have to do to get the support and expression they want surely varies from person to person. Nevertheless, for most husbands, withholding the use of their power to deny

their wives' deeply rooted demands and allowing the wives to have what they want is a readily available and widely effective approach for them to promote their getting whatever emotional satisfaction they may seek.