Utter degradation. It’s so common to be a bad person, that we call bad “good” as long as it’s to a “normal” degree. It seems extreme to say the average couple are bad people, but consider the following:
”Hey guys, I better get home or I’ll get an earfull. You know what they say - happy wife, happy life!”
This phrase makes me want to wretch. What’s being suggested is that giving in to emotional terrorism is the path to happiness! I mean, for the love of all that’s holy... I won’t belabor the point, but the average couple is engaged in continuous appeasement of insecuritues, bargaining, and emotional black mail. And we call it love.
Evil is nothing if not a perversion.
A man or women can be unhappy with the behavior of their SO, such as staying out too late. People can feel what they want. If you don't care about how they feel, then that's your problem. If you want to have a good relationship, you need to take into account how the other person feels. A happy partner makes a happy life indeed. Doing whatever you want doesn't tend to lead to that.
I agree that doing whatever you want doesn't lead to a happy partner in our current environment, though I don't see this as a reason to abide such dysfunction. A lot of people hung from the gallows for speaking truth; it doesn't mean they should have just went along to get along.
Considering that feelings are responses to thoughts, if the thoughts generating those feelings are misguided, then to "take into account how the other person feels" implies factoring in erroneous thinking into your decision-making process.
Now, there's a certain amount of patience and compassion one may choose to employ to facilitate another's learning process, but if the person stubbornly holds to false beliefs in the face of sound reason, I don't think it serves anyone - especially them - to enable their ignorance by acting in accordance with it.
The only reason why someone would be upset by what their significant other does (barring flagrant rights violations) is because they want control:
None of this has anything to do with love. It's all slavery, as unpopular as that may be to say. A true loving relationship would stretch the boundaries of the current cultural imagination. It would be all sharing, caring, and connection, and would demand absolutely nothing from the other person (again, outside of basic morality).
And not just because it's wrong to make such demands, but because there would be a genuine desire for the one you love to live in full expression of their true self.