I was reading an article on the 7 health risks for men over 40 and one of them was “being single”:
Numerous surveys have shown that married men, especially men in their 50s, 60s, and 70s, are healthier and have lower death rates than those who never married or who are divorced or widowed. Never-married men are three times more likely to die of cardiovascular disease, for example. After 50, divorced men’s health deteriorates rapidly compared to married men’s, found a RAND Center for the Study of Aging report.
What’s the magic in the ring? The social connectedness of marriage may lower stress levels and depression, which lead to chronic illness. (Women tend to have more social ties outside of marriage.)
Oops: Unmarried men generally have poorer health habits, too — they drink more, eat worse, get less medical care, and engage in more risky behaviors (think drugs and promiscuous sex). Exception: It’s better to be single than in a strained relationship, probably because of the stress toll, say researchers in Student BMJ.
Maybe the older men who stayed married had wives who didn’t cause as much stress, hence the better health. The thing is, as marriage becomes more stressful for younger men, is it better to stay single for your health?
Another thought: Men are living longer than ever and marrying less and less often, is there a connection?
How many men in these surveys were unmarried due to the very same things that lead to their early deaths, such as morbid obesity, alcoholism, mental illness and drug addiction? Fat, drunk and stupid makes it hard to find a spouse and hard to live a long life.
Discovering correlations is tricky – people used to think the phases of the moon correlated to mental disorders.
A legitimate study “control” for these factors before drawing conclusions/correlations.
“Confusing association with causation” is generally recognized to be a logical fallacy.
Another obvious reason, though–if you live alone and have a heart attack or stroke, you better hope it happens in public or you won’t be found in time to receive medical treatment. With modern medicine, cardiovascular events are usually not fatal if the victim receives immediate medical attention. If a 55 year old childless man has a heart attack at home at 8 PM, though, nothing’s going to help him by the time his co-workers notice the next day.
This issue was addressed about three thousand years ago.
Proverbs 21:19: It’s better to live alone in the desert than with a quarrelsome, complaining wife.
If that verse had the term ‘spouse’ in it it would be more accurate, since two-thirds of all divorces are initiated by women. (According to the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia)
Very well, then change the Violence Against Women Act to the Violence Against Spouses Act.
Good idea, I am all for it.
and live a king’s life,
never make a pretty woman your wife;
if you want to be happy
and stay happy, too,
always marry a woman uglier than you.
Jimmy Soul had some thoughts about this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MH_PANCU9oQ&feature=related
I’ve seen 4 reasons for writing poetry. Reason #4 was the best: It’s cold and lonely here, a) without your or b) with you.
A recent study showed that of all the couplings, male/female, male/male and female/female, the female/female marriages had the highest divorce rate. So momto2boys, if over 2/3 of divorces are initiated by women, and it’s a woman/woman marriage, sorta figures that would lead the divorce parade.
Nice try, milwaukee, but there aren’t enough F/F divorces (yet) to impact the numbers. Give it time…
Some women (like me) would rather leave than be verbally abused and belittled.
And single parenthood is the single largest contributer to poverty. Nothing else even comes close. This ‘I don’t love you anymore so I’m leaving you’ stuff has been a huge catastrophy for women in the western world, not to mention the childern.
Dave with all due respect that is a gross oversimplification of why people divorce and what causes poverty.