Happily Married Couples Consider Themselves Healthier

COLUMBIA, MO, February 13, 2013—Previous research suggests that married people have better mental and physical health than their unmarried peers and are less likely to develop chronic conditions than their widowed or divorced counterparts. But a recent  University of Missouri study helps fill out the picture: people who have happy marriages are more likely to rate their health as better as they age; aging adults whose physical health is declining could especially benefit from improving their marriages.

Christine Proulx, an assistant professor in the MU Department of Human Development and Family Studies, examined the long-term relationship between self-rated health and marital quality. She found that, in all stages of marriage, positive or negative relationships affect the individuals’ health. Spouses should be aware that how they treat each other and how happy they are in their marriages affect both partners’ health, and they should think more about their personal relationships when thinking holistically about their health, she said.

Proulx suggests that health professionals consider patients’ personal relationships when designing health promotion programs or treatment plans.
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Anxiety about Relationships May Lower Immunity,
Increase Vulnerability to Illness

COLUMBUS, OH, February 11, 2013 – Concerns and anxieties about one’s close relationships appear to function as a chronic stressor that can compromise immunity, according to new research.

Married partners who were more anxiously attached produced higher levels of cortisol, a steroid hormone that is released in response to stress, and had fewer T cells—important components of the immune system’s defense against infection—than did participants who were less anxiously attached.

“Everyone has these types of concerns now and again in their relationships, but a high level of attachment anxiety refers to people who have these worries fairly constantly in most of their relationships,” said Lisa Jaremka, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow in Ohio State University’s Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research (IBMR).
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Women Happier in Relationships When Men Feel Their Pain

WASHINGTON, APA: March 5, 2012 —Men like to know when their wife or girlfriend is happy while women really want the man in their life to know when they are upset, according to a new study published by the American Psychological Association (APA).

The study involved a diverse sample of couples and found that men’s and women’s perceptions of their significant other’s empathy, and their abilities to tell when the other is happy or upset, are linked to relationship satisfaction in distinctive ways,
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Is Silence Golden? Maybe Not So Much

While it seems obvious that expressions of gratitude would increase positive feelings in the partner receiving gratitude, it is not quite as self-evident that there would also be benefits for the expresser. Nevertheless, whether in romantic partners or friends, the researchers found evidence that the sense of communal strength was heightened for those who voiced gratitude—at least in the sample of college students studied.
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