I have never understood this joke. Growing up I never heard my Pops say anything like that even jokingly (though he would often say she wouldn't let him buy dumb stuff but that was the extent of it). However it's super common in older media and culture and is still notice able in contemporary times. I even hear from guys around my age who in their late 20s to mid 30s in break room chats. I haven't noticed a national or race trend either, it seems to be from dudes of every background.
Is marriage that soul crushing that you resent your partner?
Is it a "pressure release valve" sorta thing about monogamy? Is it actually something people feel? Do guys feel trapped somehow or are just realizing they live unfulfilling lives and project that on to their partners? If that's the case it's kinda weird, like your wife is supposedly the love your life and I would assume you'd really like them.
I remember hearing at lot at my Men's group at my church when I was an early teen. "Upstanding, moral, virtuous Christian men™️©️®️" just kinda openly saying stuff like and pretty much everyone saying "lmao same" (or the time appropriate equivalent).
I see it a lot in movies too. Tons of films are about guys secretly pining for someone else or just resolved to live their lot with some they feel hinders them.
I remember reading the book " Bowling Alone " which lacked any real material analysis of social conditions but it mentioned that men's groups were guys would go to escape their marriage for a bit. While I understand it's important to have your own friends and social groups, the idea it's describe "escape" seems like it's an unpleasant space to be in. Has patriarchy created marriage into prison were men are both the jailed and jailor like it has for many other things in men's lives?
Do dudes really loathe their partners this much?
Conservatives get married and have children way too young and way too fast in order to live up to the reactionary social pressures placed upon them by their elders and community. The function of this is to maintain the feudal property relations inherent to the family unit, because it is the atomic structure of their grip on the present social order. In the process of fulfilling this reactionary social duty, they come to realize that they and the people they married have very little in common. They come to resent and loath their spouses, feel trapped, and eventually divorce. In the process of divorce they often lose money, time, and personal possessions, which increases their resentment. Because men are the property owners of the family unit, ex-wives "getting away with" half of the property of the male is seen as violating the entire family structure. They grow so bitter and hateful of this arrangement that they spend the rest of their lives complaining about their ex wives and pining after this ideal family unit that never existed. They view themselves as the "bread winners" of this ideal family unit even though most families are dual income these days and women do tons of unpaid domestic labor that men don't. They don't see the structural inequality. All they see is that they "bought all the stuff" and "the ex wife took half of it." and on top of that, they think the ex wife deprived them of what the traditional fairy tales promised them, rather than seeing through the fairy tale itself.