Women need Happy Marriages for Healthy Life; for Men any marriage will do!

Marriage is an important sponge for stress. It helps people to lower their stress levels if they are in a happy marriage. The way it affects men and women is different but for both marriage helps.

In two studies, one reported by Houston Chronicle and another on American Psychology Association (complete report of this study in the attachment to this post), it seems that Women who are in an unhappy relationship do not have it good. Only women in a satisfying (romatically) marriage have lower stress level and health indicators related to that.

Results indicate that women in marriages characterized by high levels of satisfaction showed a health advantage when compared with participants in marriages characterized by low levels of satisfaction and with unmarried participants (single, widowed or divorced). This included lower levels of biological and lifestyle cardiovascular risk factors – such as blood pressure, cholesterol levels and body mass index – and lower levels of psychosocial cardiovascular risk factors – such as depression, anxiety and anger. Those women in highly satisfying marriages also showed this same health advantage when compared with women in moderately satisfying marriages, but to a lesser extent.

Not only are the factors of stress higher, but the unmarried or those in unhappy marriages take longer to rebound off stress situations. Those in happy/satisfying marriages rebound faster!

Researchers at the University of California’s Los Angeles and Davis campuses have found that women in happy marriages recover more quickly from workday stress than women in unhappy ones.

Men on the other hand, do not seem to care at all. Or rather the married men! Married men, the LA study shows, have lower stress levels than un-married men. Some other studies have found that married men tend to live longer and recover from illnesses better than single ones. And this study showed that “quality” of the marriage did not matter for men in their recovery from stressful situations.

Men, whether in happy or unhappy marriages, tended to rebound quickly from a busy, stressful workday, their cortisol levels showed.

So, it was clear that for men, just the act of marriage is important – not necessarily its quality!

Message for the New Year:

To Men: Just Get Married!
To Women: Get Married! But make sure you like and can like the guy for the rest of your life, if you want to remain healthy and sane!!

Attachment: marriage and women.pdf