They say that marriage isn’t a word, but a sentence. For the most part however, it seems to be a cushy one. Quite aside from the massive party, shiny ring and tax breaks, science has revealed numerous other benefits to getting hitched. For instance, just last week a study was published suggesting that being married boosts your chances of surviving cancer. “Generally speaking, people who are in stable marriages have better health compared to those who have never been married, but it’s not so much about being legally married as the benefits of being in a stable, long-term relationship,” says George Ploubidis, reader in population health and statistics at University College London.
So what else is good about being paired off? Here’s our guide to the upside of settling down.
Physical health
Numerous studies have associated marriage with a lower risk of disease, from diabetes to cardiovascular and respiratory problems – particularly if you are a man. “Married people tend to smoke less, drink less alcohol, and eat more healthily,” says Ploubidis. “Having a joint income also helps, and relationships can provide a buffer against the stresses of major life events.”
Cohabitants, on the other hand, seem to drink and smoke more, yet they are still buffered against some of the negative consequences, Ploubidis and his colleagues have found. “Possibly this is because they eat more healthily or have greater levels of social support,” he says.
But this is only likely to be true of happy unions. Separate research has revealed that individuals in conflict-ridden relationships have higher levels of inflammation, which is associated with many age-related diseases, weaker responses to vaccination and slower healing rates, compared with happy couples.
Longevity
Being happily married can also boost your chances of living a long life. When researchers combined the results of numerous studies, they found that husbands and wives were 10-15% less likely to die prematurely than the population as a whole.
Possibly it’s because if you’re in a long-term relationship, you’ve got someone else looking out for your health. “Your familiarity with someone else’s body has benefits in terms of their health status: you could be looking at their back and see a mole that needs attention, or there was a case a while ago where the man was touching his wife’s breast and felt a lump,” says Kaye Wellings of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. “And if one person stops smoking, generally the other one stops as well.”
However, critics of these studies point out that many count people who are divorced or widowed as unmarried, even though they might have spent many years as part of a couple. Instead they point to results from the Terman Life-Cycle Study, which started in 1921 and followed 1,528 men and women for as long as they lived. Here, those that lived the longest were those who got married and stayed married – and those who never married in the first place.
Once again, the quality of the relationship probably matters. A 2014 study published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health revealed that people who experienced frequent conflicts with their partner were twice as likely to die during the study period than those who rarely experienced conflict.
Wealth
They say you can’t put a price on love, but that hasn’t stopped economists from trying. People who get married and stay married have roughly double the wealth of those who never marry – or four times the wealth if you consider their combined household income, research by Jay Zagorsky at Ohio State University suggests. In part, this is because increasingly, both halves of the couple work, meaning two salaries. Couples can also take advantage of economies of scale, buying one car that they share and maintain, rather than two, for instance; and it can occasionally mean that one partner picks up the slack while the other goes for a promotion, or works hard to score a bonus, for instance.But it’s also true that wealthy, and highly educated individuals are more likely to marry in the first place. Recent data from the Marriage Foundation suggests that wealthier couples are four times more likely to get married than people from poorer backgrounds – perhaps no surprise when you consider the average cost of a wedding is £20,500
And if you get married and then divorce, Zagorsky’s research suggests you’ll end up financially worse off than if you’d never married in the first place.
Less loneliness
The health benefits of long-term relationships also seem to extend to mental health: married people report less depression, and they’re also less likely to abuse drugs and alcohol. Of course, people who are prone to depression and substance abuse may also be less likely to form long-term relationships in the first place. But partnering up does have the benefit of providing a shoulder to cry on when things get tough; a problem shared is a problem halved, after all.That’s not to say that singledom necessarily condemns you to a life of loneliness and depression, however. One reason why the benefits of marriage seem so much greater for men than women could be that women often have larger social networks outside marriage, and these already give them valuable support. If you’re single, maintaining strong friendships could provide a similar emotional prop.
Happiness
You get married and live happily ever after, right? Generally speaking, research supports the idea that married people are happier. But perhaps happier people are more likely to get married in the first place. Happy people tend to be more sociable, and they’re therefore more likely to meet someone they’d like to form a long-term relationship with in the first place. Getting married also seems to cause a temporary blip in happiness levels: one study that tracked 24,000 German couples over 15 years found that although marriage increased happiness in the short term, as time wore on, individuals’ happiness levels eventually returned to their premarital state.
However, a recent study that combined British data with data from the Gallup World Poll concluded that marriage really does make individuals happier in the long run. The effects were particularly vivid during middle age, when people feel the toll of family demands, career stress and wondering where on earth their life is going. Here, married people experienced a shallower dip than singletons.
Sex life
Surely single people have more sex though? In fact, people who are married or cohabiting have sex roughly twice as often as those who are single, says Wellings, who is also co-lead of the National Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyle Study (Natsal). But it is true that the frequency of sex declines the longer a couple have been together. “After taking account of age and relationship type, those whose relationship has lasted less than two years have sex twice as frequently as those for whom it has lasted six years or more,” Wellings says. American research echoes this trend. For instance, a 2010 survey of 5,865 Americans found that 61% of singles reported not having had sex within the past year, compared with 18% of married people.What about quality of sex? This is harder to get data on, but Natsal has recorded levels of sexual satisfaction among interviewees. Here, it seems that absence really does make the heart grow fonder: 65% of men and 67% of women who live with their partner report being sexually satisfied, compared to 83% and 80% of those who are in a steady relationship, but live apart. This compares to 46% and 44% of men and women who have never lived with a partner (and 39% and 35% of those who are single now but previously lived with someone).
Obesity
So couples are happier, wealthier, live longer lives and are having more satisfying sex than single people. No wonder they’re so smug. But at least singletons have one thing to feel superior about: they’re likely to be fitter and slimmer. Married men are 25% more likely to be obese or overweight than their unmarried counterparts, one recent US study found – though there was no significant difference for women. Another study found that unmarried men and women spend an extra 1hr 36min per fortnight exercising on average, compared to married individuals. Some of this may be due to the demands of raising children – although curiously, the gap between the married and the never-married was greater for men. Perhaps it is true that married people are more inclined to let themselves go.
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