It’s well-established that, with some exceptions, married people live longer and healthier lives than unmarried people. But until recently, researchers hadn’t conducted a very thorough examination of how well a marriage survives when one partner becomes seriously ill.
The results of that effort probably won’t cheer anyone — least of all women. When a wife falls ill, there is a 6 percent greater chance that a later-life marriage will end in divorce than there is if she remains healthy. When a husband becomes sick, there is no impact on the odds that the couple will divorce.
Now, as you call your friends with yet another example of what jerks we men are, (more on that later), keep in mind that the data don’t tell us which partner initiated the breakup, and the study of 2,701 marriages of people 51 and older did not ask them why they split. Also, as the Huffington Post points out, in younger couples, work-related health problems among men are linked to a greater chance of divorce.
[A bad marriage can literally break your heart – especially if you’re a woman]
The new research “is not a comment on either gender’s character,” said Amelia Karraker, an assistant professor of human development and family studies at Iowa State University, the lead author of the paper and, I hasten to note, a woman. She acknowledged, however, that “the findings are, on their face, discouraging.”
Writing in the current issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Karraker and colleague Kenzie Latham concluded that “married women diagnosed with a serious health condition may find themselves at increased risk of divorce and may have to manage disease sequelae while experiencing the stressors associated with divorce. These women may be particularly vulnerable for further health declines considering the negative health consequences associated with marital dissolution.”
The two used data on marriages from 1992 to 2010, collected by the Health and Retirement Study at the University of Michigan. They chose cancer, heart disease, lung disease and stroke as the four serious illnesses to examine because they are common in people of that age. There were no same-sex marriages in the population.
Source; http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/03/06/in-sickness-and-health-wifes-serious-illness-increases-chance-of-divorce-later-in-life-husbands-doesnt/
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