experts explain
Lovers live longer : Solid relationships add up to nine years more life
Studies show that people in a committed relationship live longer.
© lev dolgachov / Picture Alliance
On Valentine’s Day, couples celebrate their love. A stable relationship can add up to nine years more life. Above all, communication is crucial for harmonious coexistence.
Researchers have already been able to prove in several studies that couples – whether married or not – live longer. As early as 2011, an analysis of the data from 500 million people, most of whom came from industrialized nations, demonstrated a “protection effect” in married couples: According to this, married people had a 24 percent lower risk of death than single people.
One study at the Max Weber Institute for Sociology at the University of Heidelberg was able to prove that unmarried couples also benefit from the protective effect. This is because, on the one hand, those who are already physically fit are more likely to find a partner. On the other hand, partners exercise a certain social control over each other. And they support each other when they are ill, which can be a great relief. “For people with diabetes, the partner is often the most important support,” says Eva Küstner, a specialist diabetes psychologist from Gau-Bischofsheim, in the pharmacy magazine “Diabetes Ratgeber”. Above all, it is helpful to clearly agree in advance how the partner can help and how not.
One shows, for example, that the partner also plays an important role in the healing process after illness study from Emory University in Atlanta. Cardiologists examined 6,000 patients who came to the clinic with suspected severely narrowed coronary vessels and who underwent cardiac catheter treatment there. In the years that followed, those patients who were married fared significantly better than those who were single or separated.
For Valentine’s Day: Mutual understanding in the relationship
According to experts, it is crucial for a long-term, harmonious relationship whether and how much couples get along with each other. “As long as a couple can talk to each other, that’s always good for a relationship,” says André Kellner, a psychologist and couples therapist from Munich. It is important that both really talk to each other, listen to each other and try to understand the other. Mutual understanding usually succeeds without problems at the beginning of the relationship.
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Only after a certain time do the partners then stumble over what separates them and often overlook what connects them. “In the beginning, being different in your partner was still exciting. Later, it just annoys a lot of people. Then the same conversations continue over and over again to vent one’s own frustration,” explains Kellner.
According to the expert, the way to a fulfilled partnership lies in accepting and accepting the other in his own uniqueness. When both can understand each other’s needs, there is a rapprochement.
Source: “Journal of the American Heart Association“, “spectrum“, Word and picture publisher