Interview with “Happy Wife, Happy Life” Star Bridget McManus

When we were sitting down together just as friends hanging out, we’re like, “Wouldn’t it be great to have a show that had a positive representative of lesbian marriage?” Because a lot of times you’ll see lesbians, or you’ll see lesbian marriage, it’s always the idea of just marriage in general. It’s like, marriage is hard, marriage is difficult, you have to really work at marriage.

We are very fortunate we both married our soulmates and we both have really great marriages. So we’re like, “What if we did a show, it’s like a talk show, and we got to showcase our marriages and talk about the ins and the outs and the goods and the bads?”

Cat immediately was on board, and her wife Kristen was excited, and then my wife, Karman, was dragging her feet. She’s like, “I don’t want to do this. My mom’s going to watch this. Are we going to talk about sex? What’s going to happen?”

We’re kind of an open book. We do have safe words, which we talk about in season one, so Cat and Kristen’s safe word is “pineapple”, and Karman and my safe word is “stop it”, so if there’s anything we don’t want to say, or we want to close that door, we do say our safe words, but we actually rarely ever pull those cards. We’re pretty much an open book.

We’re just very … My family’s very open. My parents, if there is anything that I say that’s uncomfortable they just kind of shake their heads, like whatever. It’s also a blessing that I’m a comedian because they’re like, “Whatever. What are you saying? Why are you saying that?”

I never really shy away. Karman is a little more reserved because we did a segment about whether it’s okay, if you’re vising your in-laws, to have sex in their house? I shared quite a bit about what we did in her in-laws’, my in-laws’ house. She was like, “You need to take it down a notch. We don’t need to go all there.”

Cat and Kristen, they’ve been married for two and a half years. They’re still figuring themselves out, so they are very exploratory, where we now, being married ten years, we’re more we have things set in stone. I love being married, I love being gay, and I have no shame in it, so I’m not going to censor myself until my wife tells me to knock if off.

I think part of it was advocacy and fighting, so we were fighting for our marriage. We kind of went through this trauma together because we couldn’t get married, so there’s part of that, whereas Cat and Kristen, and I’m not discrediting any part of their amazing marriage, it’s just … It’s such a blessing now that gay people all over the country can get married. They can just get married. They don’t have to fight. Hopefully that continues in the future.

I think we have that shared trauma, and also just being with anybody long enough you know each other’s ins and outs. We got married, we had gone through a lot, we’ve … Karman recently lost her father. We’ve just lived just a longer life together, so we know each other’s ins and outs, goods and bads, and Cat and Kristen are still kind of figuring things out.

We were just with them the other day. They were talking about how they have this rule, which I think in insane, where if they’re drinking they can make out with other people, which is not a rule in my marriage. I kept saying, “You guys, this is not going to work.” They’re like, “No, it’s totally going to work.”

It’s only because they haven’t tried it. They’ve been saying this for years, but they haven’t actually tried it. I think once they try it they’re going to realize it’s not going to work because they’re very monogamous. Some people are polyamorous and they can do stuff. I just know these two. I’ve known them for many years. This is not going to work, ladies, so let’s see what happens.

They vary from kind of who … How do you divide up the toys to if you guys were getting in a new relationship do you throw all your sex toys away? There’s a big variety of questions that go in there.

Somehow through this show I realized, oh, she really puts an effort in. It’s not just like, okay, whatever, Bridget. She makes an effort to deal with me when I’m being difficult, which I think happens in a lot of couples. Some people are hotheads and they over express themselves, and some people close themselves off and they don’t express themselves, which is kind of what Cat and Kristen do, too.

It’s just the dynamic we have. Doing this show every time it makes me just appreciate my wife more. I’m like, “Thank you for being married to me.” I said that to her right before you called. I was like, “Thank you for being married to me.” It makes me appreciate her more.

I do that all the time. I test drive one car and I buy it. I’m very impulsive, and Karman is very thoughtful and methodical. She goes through and kind of lays everything out.

She’ll do things like, I know you like … I love Brazilian music, so she’ll find out that some band that I like is performing. I won’t know because I don’t pay attention. She’ll say, “Hey, guess what. We’re going out tonight.” I’ll get dressed up and we’ll go and she’ll surprise me. We’re going to go see a band that I would really like and care about that I would never take the time and research for myself.

That kind of thoughtfulness I so appreciate because I just don’t … I don’t pay attention to a lot of things. Cat and Kristen are really sweet because their schedules can be opposite sometimes.

Sometimes they’re working nights or days, vice versa, so they do this thing where they always make dinner for the other person. They don’t even care what’s in the house. They just will raid the fridge and just make this … They call it their dinosaur post-apocalyptic meal.

They just throw everything on a plate. It looks disgusting if you ask me, but just the sentiment and the sweetness. They’re just very loving, caring people. They prioritize their relationship, which is what Karman and I do. It makes me very … Just feel very fortunate and happy and bubbly about the fact that I’m with someone that cares about me as much as I care about them.

To have a live audience you’re definitely playing for the laughs, which was my concern because I’m like, “I want it to be … Yes, we can say funny things because Cat’s a comedian, I’m a comedian, Kristen’s a performer, Karman’s a performer, but I want us to also stay true to the show.”

Having that audience it just … They fed us. They were so much positive energy coming towards us. We gave everybody paddles in the audience, so everybody got to participate in all the paddle questions. I might say no on something and I look out and I see a sea of lesbians and they all have the yes paddles up, so we got to have a little dialogue about it. It was really great.

I don’t want to be in public rolling around with sand in my vagina. That does not seem nice. I don’t understand how Kristen and Karman can even think that’s an idea, a possibility, because that’s never going to happen.

Rather than just a regular relationship we need to learn to walk away. If you walked away you wouldn’t have to suffer in this lesbian bed death, but I don’t think it’s real.

If anybody has any questions for me or if they want to submit questions you can go to Bridgetmcmanus.com to send all questions and any inquiries, so B-R-I-D-G-E-T-M-C-M-A-N-U-S.com.

It feeds into them. We’re not really making money off it. It just goes back into, like, the circle, the cycle over there. I’ve worked with Tello Films since 2009. I did a series called Maybelle, which is a romantic dramedy.

I love this company, so whenever we do stuff with them, because Cat Davis and I produced season one together, so we own it outright. We can put it on YouTube, but by putting it on Tello it gives back to Tello and it’s funding other lesbian and bisexual women projects. That’s my passion is making sure there’s as many queer projects out there as possible.

I believe that queer women deserve more queer coverage. If we don’t have to go to a network that’s run by a straight white man to get green lit, if we can just go to an independent company that’s run by women, run by lesbians saying, “Hey, you have an idea? Here’s a budget. You can make it,” and they don’t have to make it less gay or watered down or change the concept, it’s just like … It’s so exciting that this company exists. I really love working with them.