Are Men Really Happier than Women?

According to a recent column published by The Huffington Post, women have the right to choose. The right to choose their happiness, of course.

That is the major takeaway for me from the condescending column written by a man, Marcus Buckingham, who decided to share the delightful news that “though women begin their lives more fulfilled than men, as they age, they gradually become less happy. Men, in contrast, get happier as they get older.”

Well, I don’t know about you, but just hearing that statement knocked my happiness meter down about two notches. It’s like someone looking at you after a late night out and saying, “You look like hell.”

Gee. Thanks.

While I’d like to take his study of female (un)happiness seriously, it is a bit challenging when it is framed to blame feminism as Maureen Dowd put it so nicely:

“But the more women have achieved, the more they seem aggrieved. Did the feminist revolution end up benefiting men more than women?”

Oh, feminism. You scary little thing. You make women grow leg hair, get angry and lead productive, but unhappy little lives. Sigh.

Once again women are betrayed by themselves it would seem. However, I am not buying it (also see a break down of the faulty statistics here). I am going to push back on this survey and say that Buckingham missed a big point:

Happiness and fulfillment are not the same.

The idea that a fulfilling life is directly correlated with your happiness is rather short-sighted and pedestrian in my opinion. First, they are two separate emotions. And I personally don’t subscribe to the lofty idea that life is all about happiness. For me, it’s about fulfillment and that means living every moment and emotion to the fullest.

For example, when I am sad I like to be really goddamn sad. I hate to cover up emotions. I want to live them thoroughly, not deny their existence or deceive myself about being happy when I’m really not. When my heart gets broken — and it has — I will sit with my sadness until it’s slid through every vein, blood vessel and tear duct that I own. Only then, do I feel that I have properly fulfilled that emotion and then I can move along and enjoy life so much more.

If I am elated, however, you can bet a pretty penny that I will share that sense of joy, passion and pure bliss with everyone I meet. If I’m feeling sarcastic, I make sure to shake it out of my system by delivering particularly snarky comments to the world that day. And if I’m feeling feisty, well, you better get out of the way — you never know what is coming next — but it will surely leave you shaken, not stirred.

And then, of course, in light of all these emotions, I can also choose to be happy. But that is one emotion in the huge spectrum of emotions that make up the human experience — why give it so much weight? And to confine the female experience to be judged only by a sense of happiness is about as oppressive as the patriarchy was in the first place.

So yes, ladies, if you want to be happy — go be happy. But don’t let some man tell you that’s all life is about. Because we all know, it’s about a lot more than that.