Happy Ever After Helps You Live Longer — If You Do it Right

By Misty Jacobs HERWriter

Rate This

Happily Ever After Helps You Live Longer — If You Do it Right

Olga Zaytsev/PhotoSpin

Eat right, exercise and get hitched for a longer life. A study of 1,200 men and women conducted by the National Social Life, Health and Aging Project revealed that single people die younger than their married counterparts.

Even if it doesn't last, the health benefits do. Confirmed bachelors and bachelorettes who never married fared worse than people who were widowed or divorced.

Younger unmarrieds, ages 18-44, seem more likely to die of infectious diseases or “external causes” (think accidents and injuries) while older people who don’t marry tend to die of cardiovascular and other chronic diseases.

While we’re on the subject of heart sickness, not just any marriage will do. Science Daily reports that a bad marriage may actually harm the heart, especially among the elderly.

While marriage preparation classes and marriage counseling tends to address couples in their early years together, a couple that flounders into their golden years can face serious health consequences.

“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,” said Michigan State University sociologist, Hui Liu.

Liu’s study illuminates the need for couples to continue marital counseling after the silver anniversary, when the accumulated stress of many years starts to take it toll on heart health.

While the study showed that single men are more likely to have a shorter life than single women, Liu’s study showed than unhappily married women tend to experience more cardiovascular problems than their husbands. Perhaps, Liu postulates, this is because women tend to internalize their negative emotions.

A study by Harvard University found that for married persons diagnosed with many types of cancer, including prostate, breast, colorectal, and esophageal, their chances for survival were greater than the published survival benefits of chemotherapy.

Be married, stay married, and be happy ... but another study complicates the issue of marital bliss even further. Spouses who are close in age have a longer life expectancy that those who have a larger gap. For men and women, marrying an older spouse slightly raises the risk of dying earlier.

For a man, the younger his wife, the better, as far as living a long life goes. There is a dramatic drop in the risk of dying for men who marry younger women.

“The mortality risk of a husband who is seven to nine years older than his wife is reduced by eleven percent compared to couples where both partners are the same age,” reported Sven Drefahl of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR).

In all cases, the larger the age gap in a marriage, the shorter a person’s longevity. For women, as the age gap increases between her and her spouse — older or younger — so does the risk to her health.

See this chart on Marital Age Gap and the Relative Risk of Dying.

Essentially, if longevity is your goal, get married.

Men should marry much younger women — which puts those trophy wives at risk. Women should marry close to their own age.

Good luck, Cupid.

Sources:

Marital status and longevity in the United States population. Retrieved June 15, 2015.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16905719

Bad marriage, broken heart? sciencedaily.com. Retrieved June 15, 2015.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141119204855.htm

Marriage and life expectancy. demogr.mpg.de. Retrieved June 15, 2015.
http://www.demogr.mpg.de/En/news_press/press_releases_1916/marriage_and_life_expectancy_1813.htm

Marital Status and Survival in Patients With Cancer. http://jco.ascopubs.org/. Retrieved June 19, 2015.
http://jco.ascopubs.org/content/early/2013/09/18/JCO.2013.49.6489.abstract

Reviewed June 19, 2015
by Michele Blacksberg RN
Edited by Jody Smith

Add a CommentComments

There are no comments yet. Be the first one and get the conversation started!

Empowered

Misty Jacobs HERWriter View Profile Send Message

We value and respect our HERWriters' experiences, but everyone is different. Many of our writers are speaking from personal experience, and what's worked for them may not work for you. Their articles are not a substitute for medical advice, although we hope you can gain knowledge from their insight.