In Sickness and in Health III – The Marriage Advantage
Recently, I was scratching around on the internet for intel about this marriage thing I’m about to do, and I stumbled across a New York Times article about the effect of marriage on physical health. I had always heard that (at least in mixed-gender marriages) marriage caused a man’s life expectancy to improve and a woman’s to decline. Apparently I was very much misinformed. It’s not gender that makes the difference, but the quality of the marriage.
A stressful marriage, the article states, “can be as bad for the heart as a regular smoking habit,” while a sound marriage can put a person at lower risk for everything from cancer to dementia. According to this article, “in virtually every category, ranging from violent deaths like homicide and car accidents to certain forms of cancer, the unmarried were at far higher risk than the married.” But… don’t get too excited, lifelong singles still had better all around health than those who’s marriages were rocky.
There did turn out to be a very interesting gender difference in the effects of marital discord on health. It didn’t have to to with how much fighting went on in a marriage, it had to do with the tone of the fighting. A woman’s immune systems went into the dumper if her husband withheld affection during their fights, but she was okay if there just a reassuring touch or tone of voice now and again. For the man, the threat was the presence of “controlling language” in his partner’s attacks, not the attacks themselves. The secret to good health is so not what I thought.
All this got me looking around for other studies on marriage and health and the thing I found most striking is that cohabitation didn’t come with the same health benefits as marriage. While this is very affirming for an altar-bound person such as myself, it also brought to the surface a question that has been gnawing at the back of my mind, somewhere behind the to-do lists and script re-writes and menu-planning. The question is this: “Does something magic happen when the minister pronounces you married?”
All my married friends say, “Something changes when you get married.”
“What changes?” I ask.
“Well… It’s just… Different.”
Obviously, whatever it is, it happens during the wedding, right? Because, as far as I can tell, that’s the only thing that marriage has that commitment or cohabitation definitely does not. The wedding. This gives me a little tingle-chill every time I think about it. Is there a moment of transformation? Transmogrification? Will we turn from committed to married like water to wine? Or is something invoked? A bond? Or the entity of marriage itself, like a third wheel, creating a trinity out of our current duo? Will I feel it happen? Will my ears ring? Will have a floating feeling in my stomach?
Does anyone out there know what changes when you go from the “big C” to the “big M”? And more importantly… What makes it change? Seriously, I would like to have your input on this. Tell me what you know, or what you think you know, or what you feel in your gut to be true. I am on fire with curiosity about the way that this one little word – marriage – affects us so profoundly, even so far as to lengthen or shorten our life span.
deb
Hmm, Deb, what an interesting question. What comes to mind for me is that marriage is an ancient rite of passage, despite people sometimes claiming it’s just a piece of paper. So, like any rite of passage, it can have a powerful effect.
In my case, I wouldn’t say it happened immediately. I didn’t feel like a completely different person right after the ceremony, although the wedding was certainly a powerful experience. But I had set an intention to commit for life to another person, and that intention, once in motion, changed many things inside me, and therefore, within our relationship also.
Thinking of you and Chris and sending love…
I think one of the marriage partners gets fatter within the first 3 years of the marriage. And then the not getting fatter partner doesn’t get fatter, they just get really good at cooking. Look around at the wedding/musical. You’ll see it in your audience.
Buddhists get married as a vow to “work with others, beginning with your spouse”. Actually, you are making a vow to work with yourself, because you get your own reflection 24/7 , and sometimes it isn’t pretty. Marriage is an opportunity “not to hide” , and successful marriages are based on willingness to face the truth (together). Marriage expands your world to include the other person, and then more and more people, then, wow, the whole world. Marriage is about relinquishing your territory. That’s a good thing ( maybe not for ego…), but for expanding the heart.
rituals like marriage fix the immaterial world into our physical one. the words spoken before friends and loved ones, the rings exchanged, candles lit and whatever other symbolic acts you are moved to make — they all point to the otherwise indescribable connection between man and woman.
Great comments! Rites of passage are so helpful in navigating these big transitions, and ritual is just plain powerful, as humans for thousands of years have known. After all, theater is a ritual and sometimes, if we’re lucky, it changes us.
After our wedding John and I took a train headed for Glacier National Park. After sleeping for something like 20 hours I woke up and saw John (with whom I had been co-habitating for 4 years) and thought – “There is my HUSBAND “. I felt a deep contented smile start expanding inside me and I felt both profoundly safe and scarily new. Yeah, it was different. And it was wonderful.
This whole discussion makes me wonder (as in: contemplating the wondrous) about the concept of “legitimization,” which is what I think you felt was hooey in the notion of marriage, right Deb? You know what’s what, you know the trueness of your love. Marriage itself can only be the lesser thing compared to that, right? Well, in some ways, it IS hooey (the shopping, for instance – !). But then again…here we all are, two days from your wedding, working together, getting excited, remembering our own impending hopes for either relationships or marriages, recalling how it has gone since then, relaying our admiration for and recognition of your beautiful relationship. We are all sending our love for your love’s “renaming ceremony,” hundreds of us, sending a buzz of delight, jitters, faith & party jazz. How thrilling is that?! Half of it is your own act, of course, but the rest of us are crowding in behind you with our wishes and confidence, leaning forward with a little too much energy perhaps – we’ll all go tumbling! And then it’s done.
But the demarcation line itself, the before-the-words reality to the after-the-words transformation, that’s what you’re really asking about. How can it be so powerful? From my life experience with my own vows over the years (three of them: my wedding; the gut/soul-vow of parenting; my Buddhist precepts), I have noticed a truly mysterious, magical thing: that when you vow the vow, the vow begins to vow YOU. This is a real thing! Palpable, bankable, strong & supple, true as the seed-truth of your love. No hooey. You can fall backwards and it will CATCH YOU. It’s like a begin-times version of the lion slouching toward Bethlehem. The realness of your love has woken it up, out there in the desert somewhere (Needles? Joshua Tree?), your marriage commitment is taking form, has roused its timeless bones to a standing position (& somehow this thing has become as gorgeous as the girl from Ipanema), & has begun walking with heart-rending tenderness – far as the distance is, and short has the time is left, she is steadily, inexorably, coming your way, smiling, quietly, surely. And – nerve-wracking as this is – your vow will only come walking in at the VERY, VERY last minute, only just as you say The Words (whatever you’ve cooked up!). Then she will gracefully sit at the edge of the stage and just smile on you, join with you, never leave your side again come whatever may. This is a very real thing, this blessing of the vow ¬– reciprocal, tangible. And sure as you are reading these words, I know that you, too, know beyond a doubt that she is on her way – this very moment, lovely, sauntering, toward you.
Congratulations, you two!!!