On the Happy side of the Curve

Everyone has heard about the jokes. All married men will joke about their lives and tell all their single friends; Don't do it.

I along with some of my closest friends am lucky to have been married for over 15 yrs.
So recently I am in a bar with someone who is new to marriage, and has a small child. He is in the stressful period of his marriage. He cannot understand why our group is always happy, able to drink on Friday nights, play soccer whenever we want and generally not your typical husband types. We also tell the baddest marriage jokes possible.

The answer came as a shock to him.
You see my friends we have put in the time!!!! Now for all of us its our wives who aren't happy. In the marriage the tide has turned. The leverage is gone. We are on the happy side of this marriage. We are so far in, that the wives can't leverage us.
They know if they said they were leaving tomorrow, we would help them pack and it wouldn't be as crushing as it is when people get divorced. They also know we aren't going to divorce them, but if they want to we want stop them or change to keep them.
So now the wives are always grumpy. The leverage is on our side. They know deep down they need us and they know we are also probably not going to need them as much.
Ofcourse it helps to have a friend who is dating a girl 20+ yrs junior. If I knew the attraction of old men to young women, I would have gotten older sooner.