Have you ever noticed that there seem to be a lot of wife jokes? I saw a post in my one of my mommy groups on Facebook where the mom had mentioned that her friends (male and female) kept forwarding jokes where the wives were being put down.

Why are there so many wife jokes? What makes being a wife a job that is allowed to be made fun of? And why would women partake in this at all?

I do know people who do this. They are consistently making fun of their wives (whether in front of their face or behind their backs). Does it serve as a connection with other men? Is that all they can connect on?

And if you are the women, how do you react?

I remember an ex doing this to me once. I then spent a few hours trying to explain to him why it hurt my feelings and why I would appreciate it if he would back me up in public and not put me down. Needless to say, we did not last. I see other women tolerating it. I don’t know if it is for the sake of their marriage or if they feel like that is the only way they will keep their relationships (friendships, marriages, etc). Do we have to let others say negative things about us in order to have friends?

I wonder if the men who do this do not have a high enough self-esteem that they have to put their significant others down in order to feel accepted in their peer group. Or is it that they have to feel like they aren’t good enough for their significant other so they have to put them down in order to equalize the relationship?

For a while, I was around a lot of people who do this. Then, I realized that I hated listening to it. It wasn’t okay. You can’t necessarily change others but you can change yourself. I stopped hanging around people that do this. Now, the people I hang out with (along with my husband) have a lot of respect for women. They admire and respect women. And it doesn’t bring them down one bit.

There are no more wife jokes in my life.