To live longer, stop arguing with your better half

Is marital happiness a youth elixir? According to a study, couples who share happy moments and don’t hesitate to show signs of tenderness live longer and healthier than couples who often argue.

Can your partner make you live longer? According to an American study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, happily married couples live longer than couples who argue regularly.

To reach this conclusion, researchers at the University of Berkeley in the United States followed 154 middle-aged and older couples in the San Francisco area for 20 years, from 1989 to 2009.

They were sent to Berkeley’s lab every five years to be observed and to discuss their relationship and health (their association with tobacco, alcohol, caffeine use, sports, etc.). Through filmed discussions and self-explanation questionnaires, the researchers analyzed the effects of an argument and a moment of complicity on the body.

Happy couples have fewer health problems

The purpose of his interviews was to determine how often these couples shared moments of complicity, joy, closeness and intimacy. These moments are what researchers call “positive resonance” and are said to be a strong indicator of our future health and life expectancy. They would be an important ingredient for a healthy and lasting relationship.

“We found that spouses whose relationships had a high degree of positive resonance were less likely to see their health decline over the next 13 years and were more likely to be alive after 30 years.”

“Spouses in relationships who scored high on the positivity resonance had a milder decline in their health over the next 13 years and were more likely to be alive after age 30”explains the study’s author, Robert Levenson, a psychology professor at the University of Berkeley.

(ETX Daily Up)

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