It takes a while, but a ba
d marriage can kill you, especially if you’re a woman. Researchers at Michigan State University arrived at that conclusion after analyzing five years of data from about 1,200 married men and women who were aged 57-85 at the beginning of the study. A Michigan State news release reports that the researchers looked at answers to questions about marital quality, as well as lab tests and self-reported measures of cardiovascular health such as heart attacks, strokes, hypertension and high levels of C-reactive protein in the blood. What did they find? Four discouraging things:
- Negative martial quality (e.g., spouse criticizes, spouse is demanding) has a bigger effect on heart health than positive marital quality (e.g., spousal support). In other words, a bad marriage is more harmful to your heart health than a good marriage is beneficial.
- The effect of marital quality on cardiovascular risk becomes much stronger at older ages. Over time, the stress from a bad marriage may stimulate more, and more intense, cardiovascular responses because of the declining immune function and increasing frailty that typically develop in old age.
- Marital quality has a bigger effect on women’s heart health than it does on men’s, possibly because women tend to internalize negative feelings and thus are more likely to feel depressed and develop cardiovascular problems.
- Heart disease leads to a decline in marital quality for women, but not for men.