Research Shows Marriage Increases Cancer Survivor Rates

By Nina Roesner

Serious Illness? Better stay married if you want to live longer! Regardless of your gender, if you are married with heart disease or cancer, you can expect to live a minimum of four years longer than an unmarried individual with a healthy heart, says researcher Linda Waite of the University of Chicago. As long ago as 1987, The Journal of the American Medical Association published research on marriage which demonstrates that when it comes to cancer, marital status significantly impacts treatment success - married patients do better than those who are single and ten year younger.

But What About Conflict's Affect on Health?

Anyone who has been married longer than a few weeks knows that the honeymoon eventually ends and conflicts invariably work their way into even the best of relationships. In a highly reliable 1995 study, Lawrence Kurdek found that marital satisfaction is positively related to conflict management styles. Not surprisingly, those with the most conflict management skills of agreement, compromise and humor reported the most overall happiness, while conflict engagement, defensiveness and withdrawal had negative impacts on overall marital satisfaction.

Multiple studies have indicated that high levels of conflict and unhealthy and abusive resolution methods are harmful physically and emotionally to those involved. Marriage research indicates that these negative effects are even greater for women than men. Brain research indicates that men have the ability to compartmentalize thoughts and events while women tend to have multiple thoughts and event processing occurring simultaneously. This means that the argument during breakfast negatively impacts the wife over the course of the entire day, while generally speaking, the husband is able to "put it in a box" and focus on the task at hand without distraction. In research conducted by Dr. John Gottman and several others, this difference in brain function can result in detrimental health effects for women moreso than men.

An Obvious, Life Saving Choice

Conflict is inevitable, but because of the health benefits of happy marriage and the negative health effects of poor conflict resolution, couples should learn how to manage conflict in beneficial ways, accept the existence of irresolvable issues, and extend an attitude of acceptance to their marriage partner. Generally speaking, however, conflict resolved well creates intimacy in relationships, while poorly resolved conflict increases distance and dissatisfaction. It should also be noted that most couples get better at communication over time due to the repeated skill development opportunities that conflict produces by its existence. Professor Linda Waite, in her book "The Case for Marriage," discovered, "Eighty-six percent of unhappily married people who stick it out find that, five years later, their marriages are happier."

It should also be noted that the research also demonstrates that cohabitation, while providing ample room for conflicts, does not provide the same health benefits as marriage does, and neither do same-sex unions. The effect of divorce on children has also been proven multiple times: 2007 research from the Center for Marriage and Families shows even when controlling for marital conflict, children whose parents get divorced or never get married have increased risks of mental illness that extends well into adulthood.

The Bottom Line: Healthy marriages result in healthy families and longer life spans. Learning to resolve conflict well is definitely worth doing!