Three Somewhat Unrelated and Yet Important (at least to me) Thoughts on Happiness

I've been thinking a lot about happiness lately: I was reminded by a speaker at a recent event that happiness psychology (layperson's definition: the study of what makes us happy and how to get/stay in a state of happiness) has grown exponentially. Likewise, I've heard reports on the movement to replace GDP with a happiness index, as a better measurement of a country's well-being.

I applaud both movements. Three cheers for studying happiness. Three cheers for adopting it as an official measure of federal well-being.

And toward both ends, here are my completely unresearched layperson's thoughts on happiness:

1. Happiness is a better measurement of well-being than wealth. 
The old adage is that if we'd be happy if we just had 10% more, but most of us know that's not true. Once you have the iPhone, you want the iPad too. (Guilty.)


2. Neither marriage nor money will make you happy. 
In general life circumstances don't improve (either positively or negatively) on your overall happiness. Studies of lottery winners find that their happiness levels improve after bringing home the big prize, but only briefly: eventually they settle back into roughly the same level of happiness they experienced before.

Likewise, marriage cannot make you happy long term. It's probable that happy married people would have been happy single people, had Mr. or Ms. Right not come along.


3. Your happiness is a really incomplete measure of your marriage's well-being.
It's tempting to think that if you're unhappy, then your marriage must be the problem. Perhaps it is. But perhaps it isn't. It may be that you're lack of fulfillment at work is discoloring your interactions at home. Or that the challenges of parenting (and the multitude of tasks that come with it) are distracting you from each other. It may be that you need a vacation. Changing the marriage won't make you feel more fulfilled at work, more balanced at home, more relaxed overall.

Obviously we all want happy marriages. But sometimes we mistake happy marriages with happy lives. You can't expect your spouse to fix your life for you. In the long run, he (or she) can't make you happy. But you can be happy together.