It’s safe to say that when My Lovely Wife and I tied the knot back on that lustrous May morning 44 years ago, we were not giving much thought to how married life might affect our health and happiness when we reach our dotage. Like most newlyweds, we were focused on setting up a household and establishing some sort of domestic routine (we couldn’t afford a honeymoon). What constituted the “future” barely stretched beyond the following weekend.
I can vaguely recall news stories in the intervening years that touted the latest research showing how married folks were generally happier and healthier than their unmarried peers, verdicts that were easier or harder to accept based on our particular level of domestic bliss at the time. But now that we’ve arrived at that place in the future we never could imagine back then, it seems fitting that the latest round of research is slightly more relevant — to a point.
I’m referring to the results of a study released last week suggesting married men (in heterosexual couples, specifically) are more likely to find themselves healthier and happier in their golden years than their unwed counterparts.
“Little is known about the relationship between marital trajectories in old age and successful aging,” explains lead study author Mabel Ho, PhD, a University of Toronto researcher, in a statement. “Our goal was to see whether different marital trajectories were associated with physical health and well-being, and whether these relationships varied for men and women.”
Her research team analyzed data from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging to track the overall well-being of some 7,000 middle-age and older Canadians every three years for up to 20 years. The participants were all considered to be aging optimally — no serious physical or mental disorders — at the beginning of the study. But as the years unfolded an intriguing trend emerged: Though married men reported higher levels of health and happiness than any other cohort, even those men who were divorced, separated, or widowed were happier and healthier than those who had never been married. It was as if marriage — successful or otherwise — conferred some sort of protection against sorrow and illness.
The study does little to explain why this would be, only citing earlier research that credits spouses with pushing each other toward healthier habits, which generally leads to fewer illnesses and a sunnier outlook. As study coauthor David Burnes, PhD, puts it, “It may be that married people encourage each other to adopt or maintain positive health behaviors, such as quitting smoking or exercising regularly.”
Ho and her colleagues similarly sidestep what to me seems to be the most telling result of their research: Unlike current, former, or widowed husbands, married women were no more likely to age optimally than their never-married peers.
Maybe that’s just old news. Decades of research have shown that men benefit more from marriage than women, chiefly because guys typically don’t bear the domestic burden of household chores, child-rearing, and the like. More recently, a 2023 poll by the Survey Center on American Life found that fewer than one in three women respondents believed marriage and children would offer them happier lives than remaining single.
That’s hardly a ringing endorsement of married life, but I wonder whether it has something to do with the unmarried respondents observing the trials that married friends and coworkers are experiencing. I’ve had plenty of conversations with young mothers struggling with sleepless toddlers, wayward tweens, or clueless husbands. Having been generally clueless myself in years past, I can sympathize with their ordeal while also sharing the wisdom my own elders imparted: This too shall pass.
And for many of us who have struggled through that gauntlet and come out the other side feeling mostly OK, it’s easier to credit matrimony with helping us secure whatever level of health and happiness we currently enjoy. In the same survey, women 65 and older were about twice as likely as young respondents to admit that marriage and children made them happier.
Still, only about half of those particular respondents landed in the happy and (mostly) healthy place MLW seems to currently reside. The other half probably recalls those sleepless nights — and their husband’s cluelessness — more vividly than she does.
That’s what I’m banking on, anyway.
