Strained Marriages Affect Wives More Than Husbands!

I’ve come across results of a research done on strained marriages and I thought you would find it interesting.

Researchers are of the opinion that women are more likely than their husbands to suffer damage to their health.

Psychologists from US found wives in tense marriages were more prone to risk factors for heart disease, stroke and diabetes. In comparison, husbands seemed relatively immune from these problems.

The study was conducted on 276 married couples who had been married for an average of 20 years. Each couple was asked to fill questionnaires about the god and bad aspects of marriage and married life. They were also rated for how depressed they are, based on their self-reported symptoms.

After this was done, doctors carried out a battery of tests to assess whether or not the volunteers were showing signs of metabolic syndrome – a collection of symptoms pointing to a raised risk of serious disease, such as heart disease.

They found that women in a strained marriage were more likely to be depressed and to have a greater number of symptoms of metabolic syndrome.

Of course, husbands are seen to be depressed to a certain extent too, but they did not show signs of physiological damage to their health.

These results came as a surprise to the researchers from the University of Utah. That’s because, they actually expected to find that the negative aspects of a bad marriage, such as anger, arguing etc. would translate into both mental and physical problems for both the husband and wife.

What they found is that – this was true for wives – not for husbands.

Did you know that the number one killer of women as well as men is heart disease. Major harm is caused by bad relationships and emotional distress.

Researchers have not come to a conclusion yet, if it is better for women to dump their husbands when they are in a strained marriage or if they should improve the tone and quality of their marriages.

Food for thought – isn’t it?

As far as I’m concerned, it takes working hard to bring a strained relationship back on track. For a happy marriage where both the wife and husband have to live happily in each other’s companionship, do what it takes, but resolve the issues one by one first.