The ambivalent marriage takes a toll on health

IMHO as a married person, this is a fantastic area for research! The basic concept makes intuitive sense and I&#x27;m inclined to believe that feeling very positively about one&#x27;s marriage is better for a person&#x27;s health then feeling ambivalent about the relationship.<p>However, with a sample size of only 94, I&#x27;m skeptical that this study is representative of US marriages at large. I&#x27;m also skeptical that it is possible to control for the influence of age and generational effects given that the couples have been married from 1 to 41 years in such a small study.<p>While interesting and important as a research topic, this really feels like it should be taken with a grain of salt.

This mirrors some of the findings of Dr. John M. Gottman, who studied conflict in married couples and found that having your significant other hold you in disgust is so stressful that it can have a negative effect on your immune system.

Since I&#x27;m no sociologist, how do these researchers go about determining whether correlation = causation? I myself would tend to come to the opposite conclusion, that healthy motivated people with good vitals are more likely to put more effort into their marriage, because being healthy just makes you feel better in general. I&#x27;ve been married for 10 years, 2 kids, and I look forward to seeing my sexy wife because she makes an effort to keep herself looking good, and I put in the same effort. I think having the good vitals mentioned in this article improves your outlook on every aspect of life, but of course it&#x27;s just one factor coming into play with money, time, other relationships, etc.

&gt; Subjects used a palm pilot to record exactly what they were doing at the moment the blood pressure was taken — eating, working, resting, interacting with their spouse.<p>A palm pilot?<p>Edit: What? That isn&#x27;t interesting? It would be funny if business people were modding me down.

&gt;It is also not clear if the high blood pressure findings shown in the study would eventually lead to poorer health over time.<p>So in the article headline they state that the ambivalent marriage takes a toll on health, but in the article itself they clearly contradict this and state they are not sure whether this is even true (see above quote). I think AB-testing pointed out that the masses are becoming aware of Betteridge&#x27;s law and online media now show more caution when publishing headlines with question marks at the end.<p>It&#x27;s not unlikely that a few months ago, this article would have been published as &quot;Does the ambivalent marriage take a toll on health?&quot;. At least then it would have been clear from the get-go that this is linkbait.