Research shows that an unhappy marriage can affect your health.
It would stand to reason that if happy marriages benefit health and extend lives, the opposite would be true for unhappy marriages.
And that’s just what two researchers at the University of Utah have found. They claim that women in strained marriages are more likely to suffer from depression that helps to initiate such dangerous conditions as high blood pressure, obesity, high blood sugar, high triglycerides and low levels of HDL, commonly known as good cholesterol.
Naturally all those factors indicate a higher risk of heart and vascular disease and potentially a shorter lifespan.
The study was co-authored by Tim Smith, a professor of psychology, doctoral student Nancy Henry, along with the participation of several colleagues at the university. Their findings reveal that women “who reported experiencing more conflict, hostility and disagreement with their spouses” had more of the “metabolic syndrome symptoms” listed above than women who claimed to be in a happy marriages.
Smith, in a March 4th story in Salt Lake City’s newspaper, The Deseret News,
said the findings provide, “good evidence that (women) should modify some of the things that affect metabolic syndrome — such as diet and exercise.”
A total of 276 couples took part in the study that relied on questionnaires, lab tests, blood pressure and waist and weight measurements. Participants ranged in age from 40 to 70 and were married an average of 20 years.
Not only were the couples examined for physical symptoms, they were also observed for about five hours in a laboratory setting by psychologists, according to the Dessert News. During that time they either argued or talked to each other, while they completed cooperative tasks together.
Interestingly the male study participants who reported being in unhappy marriages, reported having feelings of depression, but researchers studying these men were unable to discover correlated levels of metabolic syndrome as witnessed in the study’s female participants.
This would coincide with the long documented Mars/Venus dynamic in which the emotional strains of a bad marriage burden women significantly more then men. As John Gray writes in Why Mars & Venus Collide:
“Women’s brains are wired to feel and recall emotions more intensely than the brains of men. Women tend to have more vivid and emotional memories of events than men. For example, a woman might vividly remember and treasure a particularly romantic moment and become deflated when her partner has no such recollection…Researchers suggest the greater development of this part of the brain leaves women more susceptible to depression.”
As for the findings, University of Utah researcher Nancy Henry was satisfied that while such a study tends to attract couples that generally have less acute marital strain than others, “watching them,” Henry noted “we had an ample amount of marital problems in the study. There were lots of associations between hostility, anger and outcome.”
“These results,” John Gray adds, “are yet another example of why relationship skills are not just essential to the success of a marriage, they can be critical in determining an individual’s health and happiness over a lifetime.”
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Other MVL Articles of Interest
Why Committed Relationships Are Good for Your Health
Love and Marriage: How Big Problems Grow Out of Small Stuff
Marriage Works. Here’s When and How
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