Are women unhappy?

Go, girl,

Seek happy nights,

To happy days.

— Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Happiness is an elusive butterfly that is often sought after, but hardly achieved. Is that really true though? Are most people unhappy, or have they captured that elusive, flitting butterfly that was thought to be impossible to catch?

‘There is a little of the melancholy element in her, my lord, she is never sad, but when she sleeps, and not even then, for I have heard my daughters say, she hath often dreamt of unhappiness, and waked herself with laughter.’

Those were words from Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, as the woman was lauded for her happiness, so much so that even if she dreamt of being unhappy she would wake herself with laughter.

Does such a woman really exist, and if so, would you want a woman who is always happy?

“Is whap’n to her, always happy suh, like her glad bag buss?”

“Chicken merry, hawk deh near.”

Just recently someone wrote in the papers here that all Jamaican women are unhappy. That’s such a blanket statement to make, for no gender is all anything. All men are not bad, all women are not jealous, all men are not dogs, and all women are not unhappy.

What is true though is that more names are given to women, such as miserable, cantankerous, sad, bitter, surly, than are given to men. When last have you heard anyone say this about a man? “What a miserable man.” And when last did you hear this said about a woman? “She miserable just like her granny.”

Think hard then draw your conclusion. That must give credence to those comments describing women such as miserable and unhappy.

We’ll see why, right after these happy responses to what I had to say about ‘Read the room’.

Hi Tony,

I found your piece, ‘Read the room’, quite amusing as usual. Of course, the symbolic ‘writing on the wall’ is not a new concept. I once visited the home of a young lady who had a prominent sign which read, ‘All the things I like either make me fat, intoxicated or pregnant.’ Her message was quite plain.

Ronnie

Hey Teerob,

To read the room is essential for the success of relationships, but unfortunately most men are, as you said, romantically illiterate. They stumble blindly into a situation without reading the vibrations or signals that the woman is giving off. As a result, they end up making the wrong move or no move at all. It’s a question of awareness, and so many men lack that quality.

Karen

The fact that someone would actually write an article saying that Jamaican women are all unhappy is cause for concern. After all, it’s been said that Jamaica ranks among the happiest places in the world, despite all of our challenges.

In spite of all the crosses that we go through, we always manage to put on a brave face, laugh at it, and say, “Cho, a nuh nutten.” There’s even the famous phrase, ‘Jamaica, no problem.’

“Things really going bad for you?”

“Yea man, but no problem, it’ll work out.”

This may not be true all the time, for crosses can be real and devastating, but on the surface, we are a happy people, not staying down in the dumps for long. It was Shakespeare who wrote, “Prepare for mirth, for mirth becomes a feast.”

Maybe that sums us up, for we do like to eat, and whenever we eat, we’re happy. For some reason though, women often put a damper on happiness, and cast a pall of gloom over situations, a melange of misery, a cornucopia of crosses, especially when it comes to dealing with men.

It appears as if women are constantly griping over something to do with men, resulting in the men calling them miserable. It seems as if some women feel guilty about being happy, as if they don’t deserve it, and then find some way to crush a happy occasion.

Now, before you flay me, have me pilloried, whip me with many stripes, please bear in mind that it’s not me who came up with that conclusion, but the collective sigh of countless men over the centuries who, lamenting the misery of women, chronicled that.

“Lord, she miserable, is wah happen to har?”

Even the London cockney slang for wife is ‘Trouble and strife’. So don’t beat the messenger. To be miserable, you have to be unhappy, and even women call other women miserable.

“I could never work with other women, dem too miserable.”

Misery is simply another word for unhappy, for if you’re truly happy, you can’t be miserable. I have spoken to a lot of men, and they almost all say the same thing, that their woman is miserable. Of course, there are degrees of misery just as there are degrees of unhappiness. It’s just up to the man to tolerate the level of misery.

Have you ever heard people say a man is miserable? He may be other things — violent, cruel, brutish, aggressive — but rarely miserable. If he’s described as such, it’s usually qualified by saying, ‘like a woman.’

“How yuh suh miserable and acting like woman suh?”

Is that because men are happier than women, and if so, what makes women so unhappy and, by extension, miserable? Maybe it’s their high expectations, for many women do tend to harbour lofty expectations when it comes to dealing with men. When those expectations are not achieved, they become unhappy, and with that unhappiness is the manifestation of misery.

So when the man says that his woman is miserable, what he really means is that she’s unhappy. But no man is going to say, “My woman is unhappy,” as that would be an indictment on his ability to make her happy. It seems more acceptable to put it all on her by saying that she’s miserable, for that deflects the source of the unhappiness from him.

After all, it could never be his failings why she’s unhappy, it has to be in her genetic makeup why she’s miserable.

“She come from a generation of miserable women. Her mother was miserable, her granny was miserable, and her granny’s granny was miserable, so what you expect?”

Again, the root cause of this unhappiness seems to be men, for women are always cussing, berating, and griping about men. I’m not just blowing hot air here or making wild assumptions, for I have done my due diligence, done my research, put my ears to the ground, and listened attentively to countless men. The conclusion is, women are basically unhappy, which comes across as being miserable.

Many women are unhappy because of guilt, feeling that they have no right to be happy. So as a pall of happiness envelopes them, they reach for some distant memory or situation to put a damper on their happy feeling.

Does this perhaps have something to do with their cycle? I know that I’m treading on delicate ground here, but we’re all searching for answers. Wouldn’t you be miserable or unhappy too if you had to deal with that for so many years?

But even long after that cycle thingy has expired, many women are still unhappy. A lack of a man in their lives is also cause for unhappiness, for it’s proven that a woman who is sexually satisfied is never unhappy.

Well, that’s my theory, for that really applies to men, so I figured it to be the same for women. I could be wrong. Even if she has a man and is sexually satisfied, she somehow manages to let a tinge of unhappiness creep in.

“This is just too good to be true. I wonder if he’ll leave me or if he has other women on the side?”

I have had many platonic female friends over the years, and I must say, most of what I’ve heard from them are tales of woe, misery and unhappiness, a litany of crosses that would rival any romantic Greek tragedy. It’s always ‘somebody done somebody wrong song,’ making me wonder, “Why are they all so unhappy?”

There’s an article by Sarah Todd, titled, ‘It’s pretty much a constant, women are more unhappy than men across the world.’ It goes on to say, ‘For years researchers have puzzled over a phenomenon called the female happiness paradox. Labour economists David Blanchflower and Alex Bryson analysed global data and concluded that ‘women are always and everywhere more unhappy than men.’

‘So many unhappy women out there. Such a sea of misery.’ — Howard Jacobson.

‘You can be with one of the most beautiful women in the world and still be unhappy.’ — Rod Stewart.

‘Nuns and married women are equally unhappy, if in different ways.’ — Christina of Sweden, Swedish queen.

‘The more unhappy we are, the more fake we become.’ — Unknown woman.

‘Women get more unhappy the more they try to liberate themselves.’ — Brigitte Bardot.

Ah bwoy, what can I say, what can I add? The evidence is overwhelming.

More time. seido1yard@gmail.com

Footnote: Playwright Basil Dawkins always seems to make true of the adage, ‘life imitates art,’ and art also does imitate life. His current play, No Hope For Hopie, is life unfolding on the stage itself, as it takes a swipe at the hypocrisy of a certain lofty sector of society and the wisdom of another socalled lower echelon, in a most powerful and dramatic way. The performances of Rachel Allen and Lennox Richards are great, but the delivery of veteran Dennis Titus as the pastor wrestling his demons is a joy to behold. He was masterful and it’s perhaps his best dramatic performance yet. No Hope For Hopie is truly Jamaican, and is a reflection of ourselves. Truly another production that gives me great pride to be Jamaican.