Failure to succeed in making a marriage work can apparently truly break one's heart. Results of the recent study conducted by researchers from Michigan State University revealed that having a bad or unhappy marriage could potentially cause heart ailments.
"Married people seem healthier because marriage may promote health," relayed Hiu Liu, the head sociologist in the study. "But it's not that every marriage is better than none. The quality of marriage is really important."
The research, which was entitled 'Bad Marriage, Broken Heart? Age and Gender Differences in the Link between Marital Quality and Cardiovascular Risks among Older Adults', took into consideration five years' worth of data gathered from 1,200 married men and women in the United States. The age range of the participants fell between 57 and 85. Researchers tested their theories using various factors, such as instances of heart problems and strokes as well as the level of cholesterol.
Moreover, Liu asserted that the study analyzed both positive and negative characteristics surrounding the marriages "some people really love each other and have a lot of happiness, but at other times they may have a lot of arguments."
According to the information gathered, spouses with partners who were more difficult to deal with and possessed the tendency to nit-pick exhibited higher risks of acquiring heart problems compared with those living with empathetic husbands or wives. In addition, the negative effects of being in an unhappy union damaged older married couples more.
"It's not like you have contact with your spouse and the next day you have heart disease," explained Liu. "It really takes time. That may explain why it's stronger for older people. Your body will remember the effect," the sociologist added.
Furthermore, the research showed that unhappy married women are more prone to developing heart diseases than their male counterparts. Hence, the health of a married woman could be a reliable indicator of the status of her marriage.
"In this way, a wife's poor health may affect how she assesses her marital quality, but a husband's poor health doesn't hurt his view of marriage," shared Liu.
The research had been funded by the U.S. National Institute on Aging and published in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.
