Marriage Fights Take a Toll on Your Health in Surprising Ways

Marital Spats, Taken to Heart - New York Times

MORE RESEARCH THAT EMOTIONS CAN EFFECT YOUR HEALTH, and how it does

The way you fight with your spouse can affect your health (and theirs)

From the article:

--32 percent of the men and 23 percent of the women said they typically bottled up their feelings during a marital spat. In men, keeping quiet during a fight didn’t have any measurable effect on health. But women who didn’t speak their minds in those fights were four times as likely to die during the 10-year study period as women who always told their husbands how they felt (from Psychosomatic Medicine). Whether the woman reported being in a happy marriage or an unhappy marriage didn’t change her risk.

--When women stay quiet, it takes a surprising physical toll.

--Other studies led by Dana Crowley Jack, a professor of interdisciplinary studies at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash., have linked the self-silencing trait to numerous psychological and physical health risks, including depression, eating disorders and heart disease.

--The emotional tone that men and women take during arguments with a spouse can also take a toll on their health. The researchers found that the style of argument was a powerful predictor for a man or woman’s risk for underlying heart disease. In fact, the way the couple interacted was as important a heart risk factor as whether they smoked or had high cholesterol, says Timothy W. Smith, a psychology professor at the University of Utah.

--For women, whether a husband’s arguing style was warm or hostile had the biggest effect on her heart health. A warm style of arguing by either spouse lowered the wife’s risk of heart disease.

--But arguing style affected men and women differently. The level of warmth or hostility had no effect on a man’s heart health. For a man, heart risk increased if disagreements with his wife involved a battle for control. And it didn’t matter whether he or his wife was the one making the controlling comments. **

--Answers re: their assessed quality of the relationship were not a good predictor of cardiovascular risk. The difference in risk showed up only when the quality of the couple’s bickering style was assessed.

**Example: Man arguing with his wife says: “You really should just listen to me on this."

WE WOULD LIKE TO KNOW IF THIS HAS HAPPENED TO YOU, AND IF SO, WHAT YOUR SIGN IS. eMail semiramis.appiamo@hotmail.com .