Spouses, take heed: A new study suggests your current level of conflict won’t change much during the course of your marriage.

The study followed nearly 1,000 couples over 20 years, from 1980 to 2000. The study found that 16 percent of couples reported little conflict, while 60% reported moderate levels. About 22% of couples say they fight and argue a lot.

“There was a very slight decrease in the amount of conflict reported in the final years of the study, which was slightly larger for the high-conflict couples, said Claire Kamp Dush, lead author of the study and assistant professor of human development and family science at Ohio State University. “ Still, the differences over time were small.”

The researchers used data from the Marital Instability Over the Life Course survey, conducted by researchers at Penn State University. The telephone surveys started with 2,033 married people 55 years of age and younger in 1980, when the study began.

They were asked about quality of marriage and relationship with their spouses, as well as demographic questions. Marital conflict was measured by how often respondents said they disagreed with their spouse.

Researchers found that people in low-conflict marriages were more likely to say they shared decision-making with their spouses. “That’s interesting because you might think that making decisions jointly would create more opportunities for conflict, but that’s not what we found,” Kamp Dush said. “It may be that if both spouses have a say in decision making, they are more satisfied with their relationship and are less likely to fight.”

Giving your heart to a supportive spouse turns out to be an excellent way to stay alive, according to new research from the University of Rochester. Happily wedded people who undergo coronary bypass surgery are more than three times as likely to be alive 15 years later as their unmarried counterparts, reports a study published online August 22 in Health Psychology, a publication of the American Psychological Association.

“There is something in a good relationship that helps people stay on track” says Kathleen King, professor emerita from the School of Nursing at the University of Rochester and lead author on the paper.

In fact, the effect of marital satisfaction is “every bit as important to survival after bypass surgery as more traditional risk factors like tobacco use, obesity, and high blood pressure,” says coauthor Harry Reis, professor of psychology at the University of Rochester.

But the marriage advantage plays out differently for men and women. For men, marriage in general is linked to higher survival rates and the more satisfying the marriage, the higher the rate of survival. For women, the quality of the relationship is even more important. While unhappy marriages provide virtually no survival bonus for women, satisfying unions increase a wife’s survival rate almost fourfold, the study found.

“Wives need to feel satisfied in their relationships to reap a health dividend,” explains Reis. “But the payoff for marital bliss is even greater for women than for men.” Some studies have suggested that marriage is not beneficial for women, Reis explains. But by factoring in the level of satisfaction, this research provides a more nuanced picture. “A good marriage gets under your skin whether you are male or female,” he says.

The researchers tracked 225 people who had bypass surgery between 1987 and 1990. They asked married participants to rate their relationship satisfaction one year after surgery. The study adjusted for age, sex, education, depressed mood, tobacco use, and other factors known to affect survival rates for cardiovascular disease.

Fifteen years after surgery, 83 percent of happily wedded wives were still alive, versus 28 percent of women in unhappy marriages and 27 percent of unmarried women. The survival rate for contented husbands was also 83 percent, but even the not-so-happily married fared well. Men in less-than-satisfying unions enjoyed a survival rate of 60 percent, significantly better than the 36 percent rate for unmarried men.

“Other research has shown that women are more physiologically sensitive to relationship distress than men, so an unhappy marriage can take a greater toll on their health,” explains Reis.

“Coronary bypass surgery was once seen as a miracle cure for heart disease,” says King. “But now we know that for most patients, graphs are a temporary patch, even more susceptible to clogging and disease than native arteries. So, it’s important to look at the conditions that allow some patients to beat the odds.”

King is skeptical of the widespread belief that a major health scare like going through bypass surgery leads to life-changing behavior. “The data show that many people go back to the lifestyle that they had before,” she says.
King says that this study points to the importance of ongoing relationships for both men and women.

Supportive spouses most likely help by encouraging healthy behavior, like increased exercise or smoking cessation, which are critical to long-term survival from heart disease. She also suggests that a nurturing marriage provides patients with sustained motivation to care for oneself and a powerful reason to “stick around so they can stay in the relationship that they like.” These are qualities of the relationship that likely existed before bypass surgery, and continued afterward, says King.

The study cites earlier research showing that people with lower hostility in their marriages have less of the kind of inflammation that is linked to heart disease, which may help explain why people in this study benefited from satisfying marriages.

Miranda Devine – Sunday, August 14, 11 (09:09 am)

The fact that Penny Wong’s female partner is to have a baby is a cause for private celebration for them. But why are so many people exhorting the rest of us to celebrate as if this were some major milestone in human civilisation?

You’d think no politician had ever had a child before.

We are supposed to ignore Tony and Margie Abbott’s three daughters because every time he is seen with them it is some sort of unfair snub to Julia Gillard and reflection on her marital status.

The traditional heterosexual norm of a nuclear family and children is something to be kept in a closet like an embarrassment.

Tolerance has gone back to front. It is no longer good enough to accept without criticism female politicians in de facto or lesbian relationships. Now we have to downplay traditional marriage for fear of causing offence. No one can be a wife or husband any more. Everyone is a “partner”.

The unorthodox situation of a lesbian artificially inseminated with the sperm of a male “acquaintance” we are supposed to laud as if it were the Second Coming, the wonderful pWrecursor of what the New York Times once lauded as the “post-marital” future.

Well, no.

Wong, to her credit, has not politicised her private life. The baby is due in December, coincidentally the same time as Labor’s national conference at which same sex-marriage will be on the agenda. The 42-year-old finance minister has always been circumspect about the issue and says she is not trying to use her status to publicly push the case for same-sex marriage.

“You don’t have a child to make a political point, do you?” she says.

But others are having a field day, cynically using the four-month pregnancy as a weapon in the relentless push for same-sex marriage.

“Should the senator take the plunge? If only” read the none-too subtle headline of the Sydney Morning Herald’s letters page.

“A child on the way! Do the right thing, Penny. Marry the woman,” wrote Julie Lulham of Ashfield.

“It is a pity that they cannot enjoy the same public recognition and status that most other committed couples enjoy through marriage Fortunately, times have changed, and will continue to do so,” wrote Robert McKenna of Liberty Grove.

The issue is presented as an inevitability linked, illogically, to tolerance for gay people. Opponents are homophobic, intolerant, backward, evil bigots, not people of good will who are entitled, whether on religious grounds or otherwise, to believe that marriage, as the institution best served to protect children, should remain between a man and a woman.

There’s even mounting pressure on the makers of Sesame Street to have Bert and Ernie get married and become gay exemplars.

Maybe same-sex marriage is as inevitable as its energetic proponents say, but it would be a pyrrhic victory if it were achieved through intimidation of opponents.

As a Catholic, I believe the push for same-sex marriage is not about enhancing the lives of gay couples. In countries where it has been legalised, there has been no rush to the altar.

The issue is largely symbolic. It is simply a political tool to undermine the last bastion of bourgeois morality - the traditional nuclear family.

You only had to see the burning streets of London last week to see the manifestation of a fatherless society.

The collapse of family life in Britain has been laid bare, reported to have the highest proportion of single mothers in Europe and nearly half of all children suffering family breakdown by the age of 16.

Fatherless families in underprivileged boroughs of London are the norm.

People were quick to call for sanctions on the parents of feral youth looting shops and torching buildings.

Clapham shop-owner Elizabeth Pilgrim wailed to the BBC: “They’re feral rats. What are those parents doing? Those children should be at home. They shouldn’t be out here causing mayhem.”

But the fact is the fathers of those children are probably long gone. There are no “parents” to take charge and exert control over their wayward children.

The welfare state has taken over the father’s role of protector, provider, and enforcer, substituting sit-down money for love and care. And what a mess it has made: fatherless boys full of incoherent rage, fatherless girls having another generation of fatherless babies to a string of feckless men.

It is politically incorrect to say so, but the ideal situation for a child is to be brought up in an intact family with a father and a mother.

As a rule, what prevents social chaos and the underclass is an intact family. What keeps children safe is an intact family, with a father in the home.

Sure, there are aberrations, and you can always find evils within traditional families, domestic violence and child abuse.

But even this imperfect institution is better than the Hobbesian social chaos the children of the underclasses have been born into for the last 50 years.

Marriage is not just a private relationship: it is a social good. Collectively, the erosion of the institution of marriage, and the relegating of fathers to the sidelines, is destructive to society.

And, obviously, that does not mean that all fatherless households are bad for children.

Wong and her partner, Sophie Allouache, will no doubt be fine mothers, with the financial and personal competence to provide their child a stable, loving upbringing, despite not having a father in the home - though Wong says he will be “known” to the child.

Individually, these things work themselves out. Allowances are made, extra effort applied. Love conquers all.

But for Wong’s decision to be praised as if it is the loftiest of ideals is wrong.

Long-term marriages rank with fools, barflies and traveling salesmen as a classic butt of jokes.

I married her 60 years ago, and right away I knew it was a mistake!

Their punch lines testify to nagging, sniping, dissatisfaction and the loss of romance. Their baseline assumption is that a lengthy marriage is sexless or, at best, sexually worn out.

Darling, do you remember the first time we made love?

-- Hell, I can't remember the last time!

These days, there's a new rack of clever, grim headlines for comedians to invent:

"Maria & Arnold: Terminated!"

"IMF head sits in jail, waiting for a bail-out"

Meanwhile, I'm sitting at home, practicing my punditry and wondering why it is that after 36 years with the same woman -- with whom I have made love more than 3,000 times -- there's nothing I'd like better right now than to go into the next room to strip off her clothes.

After all, I don't really have much to say about Arnold and Maria. They've asked for privacy; I offer them indifference. I didn't really know who Maria Shriver was, beyond her name (I don't follow television news), until her husband ran for governor -- and even today, after his two terms in office, I think of Arnold Schwarzenegger as a well-cast actor in a terrific sci-fi movie about robots. Judging from the Wiki versions of their lives -- her father founded the Peace Corps, his father was a Nazi; she spends her spare time hugging people with disabilities, he spends his spare time grabbing ass -- I find it astounding that they made it to their 25th anniversary.

As for Dominique Strauss-Kahn -- like Schwarzenegger, married to a famous television journalist and driven to frenzy by the sight of a housekeeper -- his alleged aggression is incomprehensible to me. What satisfaction does a man derive from rape (or, for that matter, hiring a woman for sex)? My own sexuality is so much about my desire to be desired that the thought of sex without reciprocity leaves me limp.

Schwarzenegger, Strauss-Kahn and I are about the same age (I'm the junior one at 59), so I can testify that none of us are testosterone-crazed (unless Arnold's taking supplements). That's where our peership ends, however. The two of them are multimillionaires, political bigwigs, media stars, with guys like me in their employ. That means I've had every advantage over them in terms of keeping together a long, happy marriage.

It takes a girlie-man to do it.

That's what Schwarzenegger has been calling his political opponents since he campaigned for George W. Bush in 1988: "girlie-men." It seems he wasn't just acting in those "Terminator" films: He is a major-league alpha-ape fool.

Oh, it's hard to be a girlie-man in this flaunt-and-taunt culture of ours. Quick, name one hit rock 'n' roll classic that explicitly celebrates long-term relationships. I can think of exactly one: Orleans' happy number, "Still the One" ("We're still having fun, and you're still the one"), which made it to No. 5 in 1976 -- a year that included No. 1 hits like Paul Simon's "Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover," Elvin Bishop's "Fooled Around and Fell in Love," and Johnnie Taylor's "Disco Lady" --

"If it wasn't for the girl sittin' next to me

I'd jump right up and outta my safety seat

You got me hypnotized, soul-mesmerized ..."

And quick, name one porn scene (despite the fact that you never watch porn) in which the woman is truly pleasured. The only clips in which that happens involve girl-girl sex or gadgetry. As soon as a man enters the picture, intimacy, parity and female orgasms are banned. The "money shot," as they call it, is always his orgasm, not hers. He is "ripping off a piece" while she is suffering a nympho-maniacal seizure. That's the formula. You have to wonder if the titans of porn have even thought about its implicit message: To be used as a scum bucket, a woman should find a man; to get satisfaction, she needs another woman or a machine.

Whew. I've looked at these scenes of sex without kissing, without caring, without communion, and all I do is shudder. Is that what men really want? I can't relate.

I'm a girlie-man.

It took a long while to achieve that status. For years, in fact, my poor wife was convinced that I'd someday renounce the comfort and intimacy of "the girl sittin' next to me" and be "soul-mesmerized" by some hot Disco Lady. She knew that I sometimes felt frustrated by the sexual boundaries of monogamy; she knew that I would say yes to the right woman in the right situation (the only vow I'd made about having sex with other people was that I would not lie to her about it, neither to her face nor by omission). Therefore it was inevitable, she believed, that I would someday fool around and fall in love.

It took until our own 25th anniversary -- as well as two tepid, fully disclosed flings (finally, the right women in the right situations!) -- for me to look her full in the face and say: "Hey, you can stop worrying. I'm never going to leave you. Not until I die."

I had finally reached an age, I explained, at which it might actually feel downright weird to get naked and share kisses and bodily fluids with a stranger. Certainly I could never match with another woman the level of trust, intimacy and freedom that she and I have in the sack. "It's like, the longer we're together," I said, "the more like virgins we become."

Virgins, indeed: sharing a bed, a refrigerator, a toilet bowl, for 36 years; sharing the mutual benefit of our successes and the mutual "oh, well" of our disappointments; sharing the incredible good fortune of having a person who really cares, knows, hears and sees; sharing a life in partnership, both of us made stronger and braver by our hand-holding.

Now, that's the woman I want to make love with! C'mere, you!

Maybe strange flesh would still tempt me, but it barely ever passes through my field of vision: I'm a busy writer living in the country, where I see more squirrels than human beings in the course of any given week. Besides, what woman in her right mind would want to have a fling with me (notwithstanding my dimples)? I don't represent danger or adventure, I don't have bulging biceps, a motorcycle, a private jet, or a big roll of bills -- and I'm famous only for my happy marriage.

And I'm so out of practice at groping! -- first, because I need to be groped before I will grope, and second, because once a man learns to see women first as human beings, second as sex objects, it becomes difficult to reverse the order.

That learning took me years to accomplish -- to lose enough of my vanity and my egotism, to feel some slackening of testosterone's grip, to raise a beloved daughter to the age at which I met her mother, and to rewrite a few punch lines. Not:

Marriage is the process of finding out what kind of man your wife would have preferred.

Rather,

Marriage is the process of becoming the kind of man your wife can keep loving.

But bless my soul, I'm a girlie-man at last.

* Lawrence Bush edits Jewish Currents magazine and is working on a new book, "Porn and the Heart of a Man." More: Lawrence Bush

For an excellent book focused on marriage, read Reconcilable Differences by Andrew Christensen & Neil S. Jacobson or The Marriage Garden by H. Wallace Goddard and James P. Marshall.