Marriage and its positive effects :: Benefits we can get from being married?

Benefits that we can get from being married:

1. Longer life, better physical health, better functional health at older ages, and better emotional health.

Social scientist Linda Waite studied what is the relationship of marriage to life expectancy and she found out that people who are married tend to live longer than those who are not. She said that both in mental and emotional health, married people seems to be better off. Marriage and happiness in life too seems to be parallel.

Those who are married are happier in general, she said. Now, is this the same for couple who just live together or cohabit, there are evidence in Norway and Sweden that those who are just living in are not that committed as compared to those who are actually married.

When people are married, there is legal and social support and if the couple stay together for long term then married relationship might do quite well, she said.

Men in general tries to reduce bad behavior such as drinking, drinking while driving, casual sex and other risky behavior when they are married. Married men also tries to earn more, to spend minimal time in bars, and more time in church according to her.

Marriage is still the “in thing”

She also said that when a person get a divorced, people devote more time for themselves and children are the first one to suffer. Children from divorced families are less likely to finish education, and are more emotional inept.

Sometimes people just stay in a marital relationship because of the children too. Whether this is good for a person needs further study. People still remarry after they were divorced for the first time, but the probability of divorce will increase. Marriage as an institution is till the “in thing”, people may divorced, but still they remarry to form another family.

She added also that those who marry earlier, tend to divorce, but there is no study conducted yet to ascertain marrying at a young age is more beneficial than for those who just wait.

As with length of marriage and health, both couple seems to benefit in every year that they are married, this we can expect if they have more healthy lives.

How about those who are not satisfied with the marriage anymore, or is it worth the marriage rather than being single in terms of health. There is stress if you are unhappy and can contribute to bad health. Good enough marriages are better than if you are unmarried. Dysfunctional marriage can bring support financially.

Married people are more happier with their sex life and have more frequency of sex.

Disturbing research finding in the US: Emotional well being of those who left an abusive marriage doesn’t improve even after they left the abusive partner.

First time marriage and second marriages have the same effect on the well being of a person. The divorce process leaves a scar behind after many years.

Women get benefits from marriage, like for example health insurance for them and their children support from their husbands. Dr. Linda Waite said that “Women seem to do better with widowhood than men do, at least on some dimensions. Widowed men often have trouble with running the household, since in this generation their wives often did most of that, and widowed women have trouble with managing money, fixing stuff, and tend to be poorer than widowed men, since their husbands were likely to do THAT stuff“. No matter how couples specialize, if you depend on your spouse for anything, if he or she dies you don't have much experience doing it. That's part of why widowed people are more likely to die (and have poorer health) than married people”.

Summary:

People in a marital relationship have longer life, better physical health, better functional health at older ages, and better emotional health than those who are single.

(These findings are from a study by Dr. Linda Waite, professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago. She lead a discussion online in which I was invited to attend. I am glad to share it with everybody).