THAT'S MEN:Couples in unhappy relationships face an increased risk of serious illness, writes PADRAIG O'MORAIN
THE LATEST research on marital conflict throws new light on how a bad marriage can damage your health.
That an unhappy marriage is bad for you has already been established in previous studies. These link an unhappy marriage with a greater chance of developing a range of outcomes which include, among others, heart disease, a lower survival rate for people with serious, advanced kidney disease, and carotid atherosclerosis that can lead to stroke.
It’s a miserable set-up. Not only do you have to endure the stress of an unhappy marriage, but your thanks for putting up with it could be a heart attack.
Is this because there is a malevolent force out there (apart from your spouse) attempting to punish you?
No, it’s more likely to have something to do with cytokines, which are proteins related to stress. Like a lot of other things in life, cytokines are good in moderation. For instance, they help your body to fight infection.
But higher than normal levels of cytokines have been associated with arthritis, type 2 diabetes and heart disease among other conditions.
If you’re constantly under stress in an unhappy marriage, the chances are that your body produces more cytokines than are good for you.
The new study, published in Health Psychology, suggests that how partners fight with each other influences their production of cytokines and, therefore, their subsequent health.
Researchers at Penn State University invited couples to make two overnight visits for the study. On the first visit they were asked to have a reasonably supportive conversation with each other.
On the second visit they were encouraged to talk about what upset them most just to get the cytokines flowing.
Needless to say, the cytokines did, indeed, flow – but one key element made a difference.
That element was the use of cognitive words and phrases during the argument. These are words and phrases that suggest some thought process is going on, that the speaker is thinking about the issue at more than a superficial level.
“The reason why . . . ” or “I think this because . . . ” are examples of cognitive words and phrases.
Where couples used phrases or words like these in their fights, they produced far lower levels of cytokines and their arguments, therefore, were less likely to damage their health.
So, “The reason I’m angry at you for making noise when
you come in at night is because you wake me up and then I feel like a zombie the next day” is more healthy than, “I’m sick and tired of you behaving with a complete lack of consideration for anybody except yourself when you come barging into the house at night – you’re so selfish it sickens me.”
I have to admit that many couples would find it hard to use the more reasoned form of fighting. Some are caught up in a power struggle that matters more than life or death; some are so terrified of being wrong about anything that they adopt a scorched-earth policy toward the “opposition”; some get pleasure out of abusive fighting; some learned from their parents that the way to conduct an argument was to launch a nuclear attack; some may be addicted to stress, and so on.
With these couples, talking about the benefits of rational argument is going to be about as successful as suggesting that Thierry Henry is a decent, honest lad who would never knowingly put a foot – or a hand – wrong in front of a goal.
Other couples, though, grow into a more reasonable way of conducting their fights and thereby spare themselves much wear and tear. They still fight, of course – not fighting is not an option in my opinion.
It’s the way they fight that makes the difference between a marital spat that ends quickly and a series of unholy rows that wrecks one or both partners.
Reasoned fighting may go against the grain for some – but it’s a good investment in the future and a skill well worth practising.
To read more on this research, go to the always excellent psychcentral.com and type “marital stress” into the search box.
Padraig O’Morain is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy