Marriages and fights: And they fought happily ever after

According to a research conducted recently in the United States, couples in which both the husband and wife suppress their anger when one attacks the other, die earlier than members of couples where one or both partners express their anger and resolve the conflict.

 How argumentative are you?

The preliminary results carried out by the University of Michigan looked at 192 couples over 17 years and placed the couples into one of four categories: both partners communicate their anger; in the second and third groups one spouse expresses while the other suppresses; and in the last, both the husband and wife suppress their anger and brood, said Ernest Harburg, professor emeritus with the University of Michigan of Public Health and the Psychology Department and lead author.

When both spouses suppress their anger against each other when unfairly attacked, earlier death was twice as likely.

“When couples get together, one of their main jobs is reconciliation about conflict,” Harburg said.

“When you don’t, if you bury your anger and you brood on it and you resent the other person or the attacker, and you don’t try to resolve the problem, then you’re in trouble.” Of the 192 couples studied, 26 pairs suppressed their anger and there were 13 deaths in that group. In the remaining 166 pairs, there were 41 deaths combined.

In 27 per cent of those couples who both suppressed their anger, one member died during the study period, and in 23 per cent both died during the study.

That’s compared with only six per cent of couples where both spouses died in the remaining three groups combined.

Only 19 per cent in the remaining three groups combined saw one partner die during the study period.