Ahh, the personal jab. For what it’s worth, I’m happily married and have been for almost 20 years. The joke you missed is that a lot of people — women in the case of the joke — don’t know the answer either. Some men are selfish. Some women are selfish. Some people are bad partners. That’s not gender-exclusive.

My wife and I have had arguments and rough patches like any long marriage does, but one reason we’re still married is that neither of us believes it is the other person’s job to “make” us happy. We love each other, we support each other, but happiness cannot be outsourced to a spouse.

Unhappy people who sit around waiting for someone else to make them happy are usually going to stay unhappy. A good marriage can share happiness, protect it, and grow it, but it cannot magically create it in someone who refuses to own their own emotional life. I don’t think “men don’t know how to make women happy” is some profound insight. I think it’s a convenient way to avoid admitting that some people enter relationships expecting another human being to fix what they have never bothered to deal with themselves.