That a loving marriage may give you oxytocin and dopamine boosts and calm down your HPA axis seems quite straightforward. But what if the marriage is bad? What if all you do is bicker all day? What if there is more serious abuse? The evidence here is divided. In some studies, all wives and husbands come out ahead of single people in terms of health, even with all the dysfunctional relationships thrown in the mix.
Some researchers argue that a less-than-perfect marriage may still have some advantages for physical fitness since signing up for the institution of matrimony may bring with itself a greater inclusion in society at large, a kind of embeddedness. Still, plenty of studies show that the quality of your marriage does matter—a lot. That’s particularly true for women. For both spouses, low marital satisfaction has been linked to physiological processes that can lead to diabetes, elevated inflammation, poor response to viruses, bad arteries, and even bad teeth. Happily married women, meanwhile, are three times less likely to develop metabolic syndrome than are those stuck in a loveless relationship. And yes, love is key here. Two Chinese studies have found that arranged marriages don’t bring the same levels of well-being as so-called “love marriages,” no matter what conservative Asian parents may tell you. It appears that for a real commitment, your heart must be in it.
One of the reasons loving marriages work well for health is oxytocin. In one rather unpleasant experiment, a few dozen married couples were invited into a lab, where researchers collected blood samples for oxytocin and used small vacuum pumps to create blisters on the spouses’ arms. Each of the couples was then asked to discuss an important personal topic under surveillance by camera. The conversations were subsequently ranked for hostility, humour, support, and so on. Over the next twelve days, the couples came repeatedly into the lab to have their blisters evaluated for speed of healing. As you probably suspect, those who displayed the most positive behaviours during the discussion—such as humour, acceptance, and self-disclosure—tended to have higher levels of oxytocin, and their blisters healed the fastest, too.
The thing is that when you “tie the knot,” you don’t do it only proverbially. You almost literally tie your physiology together as well. Scientists call this “physiological linkage”—a situation in which the bodily states of two people get synchronized. Romantic couples tend to synchronize their blood pressure, cortisol levels, pulse, heart rate, finger temperature, and electrical activity in the chest. One of the reasons for such linkage, beyond the obvious—we both watch a scary movie at the same time, so we are both scared—is the existence of mimicry and mirror neurons (more on these in the next chapter).
Just like marriage, physiological linkage can be for better or for worse. If your spouse has high levels of stress hormones in the blood throughout the day, you are likely to have similar levels, too, whether you are fighting or not. In general, partners who are more responsive to one another tend to have “healthier” profiles of stress hormones, which in turn keeps the immune system functioning well, too. Being apart, meanwhile, may play havoc with sleep quality and the functioning of the HPA axis—even if the separations are as short as four to seven days. And it’s not just the physiology of the couple that suffers; their emotional connection tends to go downhill, too. The most affected are those who already have a tendency to be anxious about their relationships to begin with. What helps in such situations, researchers have found, are long phone calls. Not a lot of short check-ins, mind you, but lengthy conversations. And not emails or text messages, either.
Divorce, on the other hand, spells trouble for your centenarian potential. Being divorced means about 30 percent higher risk of death—giving up on your spouse is comparable to giving up completely on eating fresh fruits and veggies (in one meta-analysis, zero servings of fruits and vegetables a day versus six meant 26 percent higher mortality risk). In case you were wondering: so far it hasn’t been really investigated whether staying in a bad marriage is worse for your health than divorce. What we do know is that the effects of divorce are relatively independent of culture and quite similar across the planet, whether in the US, Scandinavia, Bangladesh, Brazil, or Lebanon. And no, Americans are not the most divorce-prone nation. That would be the inhabitants of the Maldives: the rate of divorce per year per thousand Americans is 2.9, while in the Maldives it’s a whopping 10.97. It seems that honeymoon-like scenery is not enough to keep a marriage alive. Far more important are positivity, gratitude, and visiting amusement parks.
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
She wore a flowing, lacy veil that pooled at her feet. He had a white bow tie and a slightly skittish expression. It’s been eighty-six years since John and Ann Betar got immortalized in their black-and-white wedding photo. The year was 1932, the place: Harrison, New York, a small town northeast of Manhattan. John and Ann had eloped after just days of dating. She was seventeen. He, a Syrian refugee, was twenty-one. People said it wouldn’t last—but it did. At the time of writing they were both well over a hundred and seemed enviably happy together. In photos, their smiles are wide and their eyes twinkle behind matching glasses.
Certainly for the Betars, named the “longest-married couple in America,” good marriage did seem to pair with good health—as late as 2018 they were both still active and independent, even as centenarians. They lived on their own, cooking from scratch together and reading books. Their secret to a happy, long-lasting relationship? “We never hold grudges. Most arguments are about food,” John said. To which Ann replied: “Yeah, like, ‘You bought the wrong kind of cucumber!’ ” In a more serious moment, Ann admitted that the key to their success is respect for each other. “We are not arguing; we are listening. And we’ve always listened,” she said.
The Betars may be on to something. In his decades-long research, John Gottman has shown over and over that skilful arguing is vital for marriage quality (and hence for health). In one of his more famous experiments, Gottman discovered that it was possible to predict whether a couple would stay married over the next fourteen years with 93 percent accuracy simply by observing for fifteen minutes how the husband and wife interacted while discussing a conflict-inducing topic (money, kids, chores). “We first look at the ratio of positive to negative emotions during that fifteen-minute conversation. In relationships that are stable and happy, that ratio of positive to negative averages five to one, whereas in relationships that are unstable it averages 0.8 to one—so it’s quite a big difference,” he told me.
The four things that really predict a demise of a relationship are criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling, things that Gottman likes to call “the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” with the most powerful one being contempt. In good relationships, contempt is basically absent. How do you spot it? “It’s saying things like, “You’re so ridiculous, that’s the kind of person you are, you’re a slug,” explains Gottman. Criticism, meanwhile, is stating your complaint as a defect in your partner’s personality. “If I were to criticize my wife, I might say, ‘You’re so selfish, all you think is yourself! You don’t care about me.’ That’s criticism. In a good relationship I might say, ‘You know, I get lonely when you’re on your cell phone doing your email when we’re having dinner. I really would like it if you would turn off your cell phone.’ Much more specific and clear, and not an attack on her personality,” Gottman says.
The next in line is defensiveness—playing the victim, denying any responsibility for the marital problems. Last but not least, stonewalling—completely ignoring your partner. Maybe you turn on the TV during the fight or start texting on your phone. Don’t do that, Gottman says. Instead, just like the Betars, listen, always listen. Focusing on the other person can help you stay calm during conflict and enable communication—two things that are key when you fight.
If you fight nasty, not only may your marriage not survive, but you might also get…fat. There was one experiment, published in 2016, that began very similarly to the one conducted by Gottman. Th
e couples who volunteered for the study had to discuss a conflict topic for twenty minutes while their behaviours were recorded and then assessed by researchers for hostility, criticism, eye-rolling, etc. Yet the goal here was not to predict who would stay together for years to come—it was to investigate the inner workings of the couples’ digestive systems.
After the marital squabbling session was over, the husbands and wives were served a fatty meal which totalled almost a thousand calories: they got eggs, turkey sausage, biscuits, and gravy. For the next seven hours, the volunteers remained at the lab while their bodily functions were repeatedly measured. Here is what was found: men and women who fought most unpleasantly and who also had a history of depression had lower resting energy expenditure, higher insulin, and higher peak triglyceride responses after the greasy meal. Their bodies were not dealing well with all that fat. The difference in energy intake from the food between the dirty fighters and those who were nicer to their spouses was 128 calories. Over a year, that could add up to almost eight pounds (3.6 kg) of extra weight. In other words: rolling eyes at your spouse could make you fat.
Are you an eye-roller? Does your partner stonewall you? If you are married or living together, yet it’s not all roses and rainbows, the good news is that you can likely improve your relationship and still reap the health and longevity benefits of a romantic bond. And no, spraying OxyLuv up your partner’s nose is not the only solution. Most people can be taught how to fight well, Gottman told me. When I asked him directly if he believed that most marriages could be saved from divorce, his answer was a resounding yes. He often advises couples who come to see him to turn toward their partner’s attempt to connect emotionally and communicate affection and respect in a relationship. “Try to stay calm when you are disagreeing with your partner—that allows you to listen and communicate understanding,” he says.
Other research shows that sharing good news with your loved one may be more important than commiserating about mishaps and problems—counting your blessings together boosts positive emotions and injects happy feelings into the relationship. Try to look for opportunities to update your significant other on the pleasant parts of your day. Maybe someone was nice to you in traffic or your boss complimented your work. Share it. It could bring you closer. Not only will your relationship be better off for it, but also your health—after all, the powerful linkages between your emotions and your health through your HPA axis, your vagus nerve, and your gut microbiota mean that a happy marriage can mean a long life.
One more science-tested way of injecting more positivity into your marriage is creating something psychologists call a “positivity portfolio.” Make a list of things you love about your spouse, place happy photos of the two of you around the house, and listen to your special songs from time to time. Remember what brought you together in the first place. Express gratitude. Look out for moments when your partner does something nice and thank them for it.
John Malouff, cognitive scientist at the University of New England, Australia, recommends another relationship-boosting technique—and a fun one, too. He calls it an “excitement program.” When he tried this intervention with dozens of couples over a period of four weeks, the quality of the relationships improved significantly. Here is what you do: instead of having your marriage on autopilot, try novel and challenging activities together. Play more. Go on adventures. Each week, try to think of something you haven’t done before, something both of you may enjoy. Rock climbing? Ice skating? Dining in darkness?
There are several reasons why this works. Not only can routine and boredom be killers of romantic relationships (that’s rather obvious), but research also shows that doing thrilling activities with someone you are attracted to fools your body on a physiological level. When we get a boost of adrenaline, we tend to misinterpret it as a thrill of sexual attraction—the kind of butterflies you get at the very beginning of a romantic relationship but which inevitably fade over time. Cross a suspension bridge with your other half and you may feel as if you’ve just met.
When I read Malouff’s suggestions, it all sounded great, but hard to implement regularly when you have underage humans living with you (that is, kids). I could go canoeing with my husband or visit an amusement park once every few months, but doing it more often seemed overwhelming. Imagine the babysitting costs! When I raised this point with Malouff, he suggested that simpler things may also work well (on this book’s website, there is a link Malouff sent me with some ideas).
Following his advice, my husband and I started weekly “home dates with a twist.” Up until now we tended to spend evenings sitting on the couch, just chatting. Good, but not good enough. Now we try to do something different every week. One time we danced to our favourite songs from years ago. Another evening we did yoga together in our living room. Yet another we picked a “newlywed game” and quizzed each other on our favourite chocolate bars and most hated songs. And I was surprised to discover that there were still things I didn’t know about my husband of eighteen years. Like the fact that the cartoon character I remind him of most is Lisa Simpson. Oh, well.
Whether you go skydiving together or simply learn not to roll your eyes at each other and to express gratitude, if you work on it, marriage may be potentially the most health-improving relationship to have. But good friendships are a close next. After all, even fruit flies have shorter lives if they don’t have BFFs.
BFFs Make You Live Longer
One: “If one friend is bitten by a zombie, the other can’t kill him.”
Two: “If one friend gets superpowers, he will name the other one as his sidekick.”
Three: “If one friend gets invited to go swimming at Bill Gates’s house, he will take the other friend to accompany him.”
Sheldon Cooper of The Big Bang Theory obviously took his friendships very seriously when writing the above clauses of the “Roommate Agreement” to be signed with his buddy, Leonard. Although most of us don’t worry about the impact of potential zombie invasions on our social ties, we should all take a deeper look at our friendships. Our health and longevity may well depend on it.
Humans are not the only species to form friendships. Horses do that, monkeys do that, and so do giraffes, chimpanzees, spotted hyenas, donkeys, elephants, and even guppies. Male dolphins enjoy synchronous swimming with their mates, while horse “girlfriends” gently bite hard-to-reach spots on each other’s necks to remove dead skin and untangle hair. Cows stand close to their friends and exchange licks. And with sociable animals, if you take their friends away, things go downhill. When such animals are isolated, their longevity suffers: lonely horses live shorter lives, and so do lonely fruit flies. Mice don’t take well to seclusion, either. They get fat, develop type 2 diabetes, and even sleep poorly.
Similar things happen with humans. In Japan, older men who meet their friends less than a few times per year have 30 percent higher risk of dying than those who hang out with their mates at least once per month. That’s a bigger disadvantage than going from eating six portions of fruits and vegetables a day to nothing (as you may remember, that increases mortality risk by “just” 26 percent). For women, these numbers were even more astounding: in this particular study, rarely meeting friends meant almost two and a half times the risk of a premature death. Even smoking comes up short in comparison (it elevates mortality risk by about 80 percent for smokers who puff more than ten cigarettes per day).
Although one study is probably not enough to claim that rarely meeting your friends is certainly worse for a woman than inhaling nicotine (which is really, really bad), it does signal the potential scale of the issue. And such effects are commonly found in research. When scientists studied elderly twins in Denmark, they also discovered that frequent contact with friends meant lower risk of dying—and again, the effects were particularly strong for women. The reason for this may lie in differences between male and female friendships. Psychologists say that for women friendships are
“face-to-face,” meaning that they are all about sharing emotions, while for men they are “side-by-side,” so more about doing stuff together (like swimming in Bill Gates’s pool). What’s more, women in general tend to put more value on friendship and derive more meaning from it, and as we’ll see in chapters 9 and 11, meaning in life is also important for health.
The impact of friendship on longevity is so large that in many studies it overshadows the impact of how often you meet with your relatives (not counting your spouse or a twin, if you have one). The reason for this, psychologists argue, may be that when we meet with our in-laws or aunts and uncles we sometimes do so simply out of obligation, which puts a shadow on any potential emotional benefits we may derive from the encounter.
Here is a thing, though. While identifying who is your spouse or your family member is easy (unless you live in a telenovela), how do you know who is your friend? Over three thousand years ago, the Vedas, a collection of religious texts written in ancient India, listed what a real friend should do, Sheldon Cooper–style: friends should provide food, protect one another’s honour, and never abandon each other in times of need. In the twenty-first century, Western researchers find that people tend to define friends as those who offer us day-to-day assistance and as people with whom we share activities and secrets. Of course, in the digital era of Facebook and Snapchat, the way we see friendships is changing, and not necessarily for the better (more on that later).
There is no gold standard for how many friends are required for you to stay healthy and live long, but you certainly need a fairly large number of strong social connections whom you meet frequently. Scientists have invented plenty of different measures in their attempts to find an answer to “how much is enough.” Generally, both the number of friends and how often you meet them seems to matter for health. In some studies, the minimum frequency is once every two weeks, while in others, the more often the better (at least once per week).
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