December 10, 2002
SECRET?:
What's the secret to a happy marriage?: Spending more time together might be bad for your marriage, a surprising new study finds. (JIM RITTER, December 10, 2002, Chicago Sun-Times)The more time husbands say they spend with their wives, the more likely it is that their marriages will break up, according to the University of Pennsylvania study, reported in the Journal of Family Issues."It's an absolute surprise," said Penn sociologist Constance Gager, who led the study. "I thought if you spent time together, it was an indication you were in communication with each other and on the same page."
Gager speculates that husbands might resent having to spend time with their wives on such activities as cooking dinner or talking about the kids, when they would rather be doing something else.
I mean, c'mon, how many freakin' hours a day can you watch Food TV? Posted by Orrin Judd at December 10, 2002 1:20 PM
Some data is missing here. The divorcing wives said they spent less time with husbands than non-divorcing wives, but divorcing husbands said they spent more time with wives than non-divorcing husbands. Either (a) in successful marriages the husband has a double who keeps the wife company, or (b) in unsuccessful marriages the husband exxagerates how much time he spent with the wife and the wife understimates how much time she and her husband spent together. That sounds like the husbands just didn't like the wives and the wives resented it.
If you know where I can get a double who will take my wife shopping, let me know.
Messers Judd;
As for a double, when She Who Is Perfect In All Ways was in grad school, I was fortunate that there was a crowd of unattached geeks who were quite willing to attend various functions in my place just to interact with a woman for a while. So SWIPIAW had a "cultural husband" and a "foodie husband", etc. to deal with those things. But once she graduated it was all over.
As for the other, if you're having troubles with FoodTV don't let her see "Trading Spaces". Even the children won't watch it with SWIPIAW anymore.
Let me echo the Old Guy's comments, and ask a simple question: how can it possibly be that HGTV =isn't= the most popular network on television? It's on constantly at our house, and my wife has our 10 year old daughter hooked on it. If I have to look at another kitchen remodel (all nicer than the one we did) I'll , I'll, I'll ...
... what was the number for that divorce study again? :-)
The wife insisted on watching the Trading Spaces marathon of worst reactions and it was the cruelest thing I've ever seen.
Posted by: oj at December 10, 2002 3:14 PMAn entirely bone-headed article and survey. And to all the men who complaing about the wives shopping, I have two words: Home Depot. Could the shopping experience be any worse? Dirty, narrow aisles filled with nothing but tools and wood and men who are channeling their inner Bob Villa! They don't even pipe in some music to distract us from our pain!
And though I don't watch HGTV ('cause when I can wrest the channel away from Cartoon Network or ESPN its on Fox News) I have one word: ESPN2. I understand about ESPN, but watching reruns of sports casts from 20 years ago? You already know who won. Classic sports? Sheesh!
Buttercup:
As a conservative you should know that only ESPN Classic is worth watching.