A Bad Marriage Can Really Be A Heartbreaker

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

A loving marriage has been shown to provide all kinds of physical and emotional benefits to both partners; however, a bad marriage can literally be a heartbreaker.

According to a new study in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, people in a bad marriage have increased risk for cardiovascular disease compared to those in a happy marriage. The relationship was particularly prevalent in women and older individuals.

“Married people seem healthier because marriage may promote health,” study author Hui Liu, a Michigan State University sociologist, told Elahe Izadi of The Washington Post. “But it’s not that every marriage is better than none. The quality of marriage is really important.”

In the study – said to be the first to look at quality of marriage as it relates to heart health – researchers examined data on 1,200 adults in their late 50s to mid-80s. The study team established respondents’ heart health by looking at factors like cardiac arrest events, hypertension, strokes and levels of cholesterol. They also contrasted heart health with how these adults described their marriages, including how close they felt to their partners, how content they said their marriages were, and how challenging or helpful they felt their spouses were in their lives.

The researchers noted that both positive descriptions and negative descriptions of participants’ marriages were taken into account.

“Some people really love each other and have a lot of happiness, but at other times they may have a lot of arguments,” Liu told Izadi.

Unfortunately, negative descriptions of marriage appeared to have a stronger negative impact on heart health than positive descriptions. Liu framed the ‘negatives’ of a marriage as adding up and having a cumulative effect.

“It’s not like you have contact with your spouse and the next day you have heart disease,” Liu told Izadi in an interview. “It really takes time. That may explain why it’s stronger for older people. Your body will remember the effect.”

The study team also noted that an unhappy marriage could drive people toward unhealthy habits, like drinking or smoking, and these habits could be pushing people toward poor cardiovascular health.

The researchers were unable to explain why women showed a stronger correlation between poor marriage quality and poor heart health, but speculated that women may internalize negative feelings more than men, leading to stronger physiological effects. Interestingly, the study team also found that women going through heart disease negatively impact the marriage, while the same effect was not seen in men.

A stronger negative effect was also seen in older people and Liu said this find should spark concerns about the quality of marriage for older couples.

Marriage counseling is focused largely on younger couples,” Liu said in a recent statement. “But these results show that marital quality is just as important at older ages, even when the couple has been married 40 or 50 years.”

The MSU sociologist said her future research will focus on marriage quality and diabetes, as well as the health dynamics within marriages.

Liu’s co-researcher on the project is Linda Waite, sociology professor at the University of Chicago.

—–

Follow redOrbit on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest.