Thank You, Ryan Gosling, for Normalizing What a Good Husband Sounds Like

Eva Mendes, you are a lucky, lucky lady.


Ryan Gosling is the greatest husband ever. Seriously. Like the best husband who ever was, the model spouse!

Why? Because, in his Golden Globes acceptance speech, he acknowledged that his wife is a badass chick who works really hard to support him. With just a few sentences of praise for his longtime partner Eva Mendes, Gosling made the Internet swoon like it just drank a bottle of red wine and watched The Notebook for the first time.

To be fair, what Ryan said was wonderful. In case you missed it, here are the two sentences that made the Internet sigh: "While I was singing and dancing and playing piano and having one of the best experiences I've ever had on a film, my lady was raising our daughter, pregnant with our second and trying to help her brother fight his battle with cancer. If she hadn't taken all that on so I could have this experience, it would surely be someone else up here other than me." He continued, "So sweetheart, thank you."

It was worlds better than that time Ben Affleck kinda, sorta, in a bit of a backhanded way, thanked then-wife Jennifer Garner in his Oscars acceptance speech and revealed that marriage is such hard work. That was before Ben ran off with the nanny and got a fake back tattoo.

The point is, Ryan Gosling thanking Eva Mendes for being his rock and support system was wonderful. But what bothers me about it is that the world seemed to think it was profound and remarkable and not just something that a man should say about his wife — all of the time. Shouldn't this be the level of respect that women and wives receive from their husbands all of the time? Shouldn't that just be…dare I say it, normal?

I played my husband Ryan Gosling's Golden Globes speech the morning after the awards and he wasn't nearly as impressed as the rest of the world. Let me preface this by telling you that my husband Nick has no idea who Ryan Gosling is, couldn't pick Eva Mendez out of a lineup, and had no idea the Golden Globes were happening this week. He's so celebrity-blind he once rode in an elevator with Justin Bieber on a hover board and didn't bat an eye.

I gave him a quick primer: Ryan Gosling won an award for a movie called La La Land and everyone was going crazy for his speech. And then I played him the video.

"Yeah, so what? That's exactly what he should have said. Why does everyone think this is the greatest thing ever?" he said with a genuine confusion.

I happen to be friends with a lot of women who are married to particularly good guys. These are the kinds of guys who share childcare duties and never call it babysitting, who put the toilet seat down and don't expect a medal, who will often let their own career take a backseat if their wife needs extra support at home. Their husbands had the same reaction.

"He seems like a good guy."

"It's nice to thank her. But, wow, it sounds like she could have used some help while he was doing all that singing and dancing."

There was only one comment that was slightly off-putting.

"Isn't his wife like super hot?"

But I think that couple might be getting a divorce anyway.


The majority of good men in good marriages think that what Ryan Gosling said shouldn't be celebrated. It should just be what men think about the women who make it possible for them to go out and pretend to be the kings of the universe.

There wasn't anything particularly remarkable about what Gosling said — except for the fact that we don't hear it enough. We don't hear enough famous men or men with loud voices praising all of the hard work that women do behind the scenes. And you know what? We need to hear more of it.

Jo Piazza is the author of the upcoming book How to Be Married.

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