The level of happiness and overall sense of well-being felt by a married man is more often than not a reflection of the happiness of his spouse, suggests a new study from the University of Michigan.

That insight's not at all a surprise to Victor Hernandez, 35, an accountant from the Los Angeles suburb of San Gabriel who notes with a chuckle how he and his close group of male friends, his "homeboys," sit around and brag about how independent and confident and macho they are -- until one of their wives calls.

"Then it's 'Yes, dear, I'll be home soon,' or 'sure, I'll stop by the store. What else do you want besides tomatoes?' It's so hilarious. Most of us are married, a few of us aren't. But, we all jump when our women ask us to do something. You gotta keep them happy, you know?"

Researchers discovered a man places so much importance on his wife's happiness that even if he is generally unhappy with his marriage, if his wife nonetheless give the relationship high marks, the man is more likely to fell satisfied with his life overall.

"Well, duh," said 41-year-old John Benitez, a landscaper and married father of two school-aged boys from the mountain foothill community of Altadena, about a 30-minute drive north of downtown L.A. "Who needed to do a study to discover that? Everyone knows guys think they're in charge, but it's really the woman.

"When she's happy, you're happy, end of story."

Actually, it wasn't the end of the story but the beginning of research for Vicki Freedman, a research professor at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research, whose work with Rutgers University sociologist Deborah Carr is among the first to explore the influence of marriage appraisals by husbands and wives on the psychological well-being among older couples. The subject is important, the team says, because marital quality has far-reaching implications for the health and happiness of many, not just older people.

The findings of Freedman and Carr's research are published in the October issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family

"Older husbands and wives in better marriages are more satisfied with their lives," Freedman noted in a university news release. "Life satisfaction for an unhappily-married man depends on how his wife describes their relationship. If she describes their marriage as higher quality, his life satisfaction is buoyed."

As well, "marital quality is an important buffer against the health-depleting effects of later-life stressors such as caregiving, and a critical resource as couples manage difficult decisions regarding their care in later life," Carr said.

Freedman and Carr examined data from a 2009 sample of 394 couples who were part of a national panel study on United States families. At least one spouse in each couple surveyed was aged 60 or older.

To assess life satisfaction, participants were asked, "Taking all things together, how satisfied are you with your life these days?"

To assess feelings of happiness, husbands and wives completed detailed diaries for selected days and were asked how happy they felt while doing up to three randomly selected activities.

For both types of questions, response choices ranged from 0 (not at all) to 6 (very).

The researchers measured marital quality with a scale based on six questions about "how much they could open up to their spouse and how much their spouse appreciated them, argued with them, understood how they felt, made them feel tense and got on their nerves," the release explained.

The research team found life satisfaction and momentary happiness did not differ significantly by gender.

Both husbands and wives generally rated their life satisfaction as 5 out of 6 and happiness very close to 5. They also found that husbands rated their marriages slightly more positively than wives.

"For both husbands and wives, being in a better-rated marriage was linked to greater life satisfaction and happiness ... but wives' assessments of the marriage are more important in some respects than their husbands' reports," said Carr, who speculated such a perceptual imbalance may reflect broad gendered patterns within marriage.

"Women typically provide more emotional and practical support to husbands than vice-versa," she said. "So even an unhappily married man may receive benefits from the marriage that enhance his overall well-being."