Falling in love changes your health quite a bit. Getting involved with a partner includes taking on new friends, new relatives, a new place to live and dreams about the goals you’d like to reach, trips you want to take together, and children you hope to have.
A romantic partner often has more influence on our behavior than anyone else. Relationships tend to occur among people who have comparable backgrounds, attitudes, and behaviors—qualities that often find their way into health.
When two people marry, their habits become even more alike. Each individual’s health behaviors affect those same behaviors in their partner. Spouses influence each others’ eating, exercise habits, doctor visits, and use of alcohol, cigarettes, and drug use. If one spouse quit smoking, gave up alcohol, got a flu shot, regular dental visits or a cholesterol screening, chances were the other would, too.
Partners can even develop risks for cancer, stroke, arthritis, hypertension, asthma, depression, and peptic ulcer disease. Commitment typically leads to shared meals, activity patterns, financial resources, and social networks. Couples may also find themselves partners in health by one spouse trying to keep the other wholesome, and where one partner’s anxiety or depression washes over the other and even takes a toll on his or her body.
Exercise, interestingly, turns out to be the exception, in that one spouse’s exercise patterns had a much milder influence on the other’s tendency to do so. Some couples may even successfully lessen the risks for physical maladies by attending couples therapy for other reasons. The therapy may have a beneficial effect on hostile or controlling behaviors, or stress-prone dispositions that undermine the health of one or both partners. Nagging a partner to alter her temperament or his bad habits, though, does not work, and can have the opposite of its intended effect.
Almost every couple will face a medical crisis eventually. Addressing the problem head-on can benefit the well spouse, too. It lessens the burden the caregiver faces and promotes closeness in the couple. Changes in diet, exercise and lifestyle often come about due to medical illness. So falling in love may also improve your health.
For more information on therapy or assessment, please contact Margaret at 818-389-8384 or by email at DonohueMA1@me.com.