Men with pretty wives are happier in their marriages, a new study finds

We have all heard the saying about how a happy wife yields a happy life, right?

Well, as it turns out, it might not be just how happy their wives are that determine how happy men feel in their marriages.

Nope, as it turns out, things are far more shallow than that.

According to a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, it is revealed that it’s not a happy, but an attractive wife that leads to a satisfying marriage for most men.

Psychologist Andrea Meltzer was tasked with the job of tracking over 450 newlywed couples during the course of four years and posed the question: does a good-looking spouse lead to a more satisfying union? And what Meltzer and her team discovered was that spousal attractiveness does indeed play a major role in marital satisfaction —for men.

In other (and not-so-surprising) words, men care more about looks than us women do.

This is what the authors had to say: “The significant effect of wives’ attractiveness on husbands’ satisfaction was significantly stronger than the nonsignificant effect of husbands’ attractiveness on wives’ satisfaction, indicating that partner physical attractiveness played a larger role in predicting husbands’ marital satisfaction than it did in predicting wives’ marital satisfaction.”

Interestingly (or, depressingly, whatever way you choose to look at it), the attractive wives also reported higher levels of satisfaction, all because having a happy hubby made them happier too.