“Ingratitude is a crime more despicable than revenge, which is only returning evil for evil, while ingratitude returns evil for good.” ―
Entitlement and resentment build easily within women, because it is a woman’s nature to be ungrateful. Her higher trait neuroticism has her in more of a fear based and scarcity state, and therefore she is more prone to focusing on what she dislikes and is lacking, at the expense of focusing on what she is lucky to have.
A woman who is childless envies a woman who has children. A woman who has children but no husband envies a woman who still has the man around to help. A woman who has both the husband and children is envious of the woman who has that, but a rich husband. The woman who has the kids and the rich husband envies the woman who has that, but he’s also handsome. The woman who has all that, envies the woman who has that BUT he’s also extremely emotionally available. The woman who has all that, envies the woman who has all of this, but he also doesn’t have to work so much. And the woman who has all of this? She envies the woman who has her husband on a business trip half the year because she likes her space.
You get the idea. No matter what you give her or how well you do, she acts like she’s being wronged in some fundamental manner and that “he isn’t doing enough when he needs to be.” No matter how good a woman has it, she always feels like she has it worse than she really does because she compares her life to people even more privileged than she is and then feels bad about her own situation, rather than evaluating what she has inherently by its own merits and feeling grateful because of it. To her, the grass is almost always greener, and so woe is her for being on the wrong side of the fence.
One of the reasons women are so commonly unhappy is because they are blind to their blessings, and because they discount what has been done for them in the past when their current needs are not being met. For example, a woman who isn’t getting the help she needs now isn’t factoring in how much help she got before – to her mind, because he isn’t helping now, he’s a bad man.
Her mind is prone to think about the things he does wrong rather than the things he does right, and on resenting him for the pain he’s caused rather than thanking him for the suffering he’s alleviated. Women find forgiving very difficult and resenting very easy, because they find appreciating very difficult and envying very easy. Given that “being a protector and provider” is often taken as an entitlement that is “the bare minimum” and “to be expected” – a man’s efforts and sacrifices often go without recognition or thanks even though this “bare minimum” is far harder to achieve today than it was even a few decades ago in the developed world.
Gratitude, seemingly, does not come very easily to women. It is not their nature. All the most profoundly grateful women seem to likewise be the most wholesome, modest, pleasant, principled and critically – most religious, and I do not think any of that is a coincidence. I think the number one thing religion does to transformatively change women for the better is instil a culture of gratitude within them through the habit of prayer. It gets them in the habit of being and feeling grateful in everyday life multiple times per day – even in tough times – by focusing on whatever positives they can find, and then comforting themselves with those positives – a stark contrast to their instinctual behaviour of always focusing on what they don’t have or how they were wronged, instead of what they have do have and how they were helped. This not only improves their mental health, but actually makes them more likeable people, because it allows them to recognise and repeatedly acknowledge their man’s sacrifices, which makes him feel loved and appreciated and in turn increases his desire and willingness to work even harder for her and his family.
In one of the Islamic hadiths (Sahih al-Bukhari 29), this timeless truth is outlined:
“The Prophet said: “I was shown the Hell-fire and that the majority of its dwellers were women who were ungrateful.” It was asked, “Do they disbelieve in Allah?” (or are they ungrateful to Allah?) He replied, “They are ungrateful to their husbands and are ungrateful for the favours and the good (charitable deeds) done to them. If you have always been good (benevolent) to one of them and then she sees something in you (not of her liking), she will say, ‘I have never received any good from you.”
Now the Muslims amongst you will appreciate me linking this hadith whilst those of you who dislike Islam will think I ruined the article and subsequently lowered my credibility with its inclusion. I don’t care about any of that. The point isn’t to preach Islam to you or have a debate about it – the point is to show you that some relational dynamics are so ancient that even texts from millennia ago are referencing things that YOU are experiencing right now. That’s how relevant they are, and that’s how important it is for us to be aware of women’s (as well as our own) less pleasant proclivities so that they can be managed and ameliorated.
This is why arrogant, obnoxious and ill-behaved women are such a non-starter. Not only will they inspire you to anger with their insolence and disrespect and venom, they will quite literally dismiss your sacrifices if not reduce them in significance or fail to acknowledge them, all whilst being entitled and prone to resentment. And you can’t build a family with someone like that, because such a constant campaign of demoralisation is too much for a man to bear on top of his other burdens and duties.
Gratitude, like modesty, is so deeply intertwined that you cannot have one without the other. A grateful woman is a modest woman, and a modest woman is a grateful woman. Alas, if greater emphasis can be placed on the cultivation of gratitude, it will help manage womanly neuroticism and thereby improve relationships everywhere through the normalisation of gratitude. Post-religious societies lack gratitude, and they need to get it back – nobody more so than its women.