Interesting article on Marriage ...

I just read this interesting article in The New York Times titled "Is Marriage Good for Your Health?"

In the article it talks about the link between your physical health & your relationship status. It started with a study that was done in 1858 about married people being more physically healthy than single people, and single people being more healthy than widows/widowers. Obviously, our society today is a bit more complicated than those 3 categories of old. We have divorce, homosexual relationships, lots of people choosing to just live together rather than ever marry at all, etc.

So, there have been tons of studies since then that are more relevant to TODAY. The part that is STILL very proven, is that our physical health is absolutely linked to our emotional health (which our relationships are an intricate part of).

"The results showed that the women in unhappy relationships and the women who remained emotionally hung up on their ex-husbands had decidedly weaker immune responses than the women who were in happier relationships (or were happily out of them)."

Research shows that some level of relationship stress is inevitable in even the happiest marriages. The solution isn’t to stop fighting. It’s to fight more thoughtfully. “Difficulties in marriage seem to be nearly universal,” he said. “Just try not to let fights be any nastier than they need to be.”

Also noted is the importance of taking time off together and making sure their disagreements don’t degenerate into personal attacks. Use those moments of stress as an opportunity to repair the relationship rather than to damage it. “It can be so uncomfortable, even in the best marriages, to have an ongoing disagreement,” she said. “When your marital relationship is the key relationship in your life, a disagreement is really a signal to try to fix something.”

So, in the end I found this article really encouraging. There are real health benefits to being stubborn enough to keep dealing with problems until they are actually solved! ;-) I can't count how many fights (*ahem* discussions) we had in our first years of marriage that went on for hours and after the few minutes of being upset, really went deep into what was really going on, and truly dealt with our issues at the time. And now, we actually have far fewer of those. Once in a while we will still have (& need) a discussion into the wee hours of the night - hashing things out. It's not easy, but in the end it's always been so good for us. I'm so grateful that we have that pattern established...I'm sure we will utilize it for the rest of our lives.

We have always told people "We are passionate people. We fight passionately, but we make up passionately too!" So there you have it!

**I DO have to say also, that I think it really makes a case for the times that it IS healthier to get out of a bad relationship rather than just stay in it, for the sake of staying. It definitely takes two people (and a lot of work from both of them) to have a healthy happy relationship.

here's the link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/magazine/18marriage-t.html?scp=1&sq=is%20marriage%20good%20for%20your%20health?&st=cse