Apparently, looks actually matter.

Yesterday I wrote about a recent study which put forward the extraordinary finding that when wives calmed down -- fercrissakes -- they had happier marriages. I hope I was able to offer a little insight into why this is so. 

Honestly, I was also hoping that we wouldn't immediately be gifted with any more highly significant studies from incredibly intelligent people whose Very Important Findings About Life were learned by the rest of us in junior high.

Give it a rest for awhile, could you, smart guys? 

But grant money doesn't just land in one's bank account, kittens. You have to think of something very important yet completely misunderstood by other pointy-headed pencil-biters to keep those sweet sweet dollars flowing. So, alas, a new study published in the "Journal of Personality and Social Psychology" presents us with yet another heaping pile of stupid so enormous that I feel -- once again -- obligated to sort things out for everyone.

Men With Attractive Wives Report Higher Levels Of Marital Satisfaction, New Study Finds

Pardon me for my momentary outburst but, "Are they f*&king kidding?"

Apparently they are not. The study was funded and conducted with a straight face by all involved.

Happy wife, happy life? Not anymore -- a new study suggests it’s an attractive wife that leads to a satisfying marriage.

In the study, which was recently published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, psychologist Andrea Meltzer tracked over 450 newlywed couples during the course of four years and posed the question: does a good-looking spouse lead to a more satisfying union?

What Meltzer and her team discovered was that spousal attractiveness does play a major role in marital satisfaction -- but only for men. In other words, men care about looks more than women do. (Emphasis mine, but only because you can't hear me laughing my head off.)

We needed a study to let us all in on the Secret of the Century -- men are more driven by physical looks than women.  Feel smart now? You needed to be told this. Researchers at major universities and in professional organizations thought you didn't already know this. You had to be told. And more than once, it turns out. UCLA conducted a similar study in 2008 and found the same thing. What are the odds?

A study conducted in 2008 at the Relationship Institute at UCLA reached a similar finding. Researchers theorized that men who felt they "lucked out" by marrying attractive wives were happier and more likely to care about their wives' needs -- and in turn, the good-looking wives were happier in the relationship as well.

“The husbands seemed to be basically more committed, more invested in pleasing their wives when they felt that they were getting a pretty good deal,” study author Benjamin Karney explained.

Get that? A good looking wife is "a pretty good deal." I suppose so, in the same way that a man who makes $400,000 per year is a "good catch." So we each have our motives. And everyone older than 12 has known this since forever. But we hadn't done a STUDY on it. So we didn't really know it.

Now we do.

Oh goody.

So a great deal more money than any of us will ever enjoy has been spent on a number of studies to tell us that men are happier when they are jumping good-looking women, as long as those good-looking women know when to just calm down and/or shut the hell up.

So put your mascara and lipstick on, sister, and start batting your eyes and stop flapping your lips.

We'll all be a lot happier.  I mean those of you who make it.