Beat work stress with a happy marriage

Posted by Ricki Sharpe on January 3, 2008  
Filed Under Stress

If you want to cope better with stress at work, the trick is to be married. However, you not only want to be married, you want to be happily married. That’s the suggestion from a new University of California study that tracked levels of cortisol, a key stress hormone, among thirty Los Angeles married, parenting couples, with both partners working full time.

“At least as far as women are concerned, being happily married appears to bolster physiological recovery from work,” lead author Darby E. Saxbe said.

The researchers found that women in marriages who felt they were happily married saw a greater reduction in cortisol levels when they came home at the end of the work day than women who were less happily married. Cortisol levels in men dropped at the end of the day regardless of the state of their union.

Less happily married women also showed a flatter daily pattern of cortisol release, suggesting that they are rebounding less well from everyday stress.

Long-term elevated cortisol levels have been associated with a host of maladies, including depression, burnout, chronic fatigue syndrome, relationship problems, poor social adjustment and possibly even cancer, according to the researchers.

The researchers suggested that people in happy marriages may have a more even balance of household responsibilities and may generally welcome an evening retreat from the world more than women in unhappy marriages.

This is the first study to examine daily cortisol levels with respect to marital satisfaction, said the researchers, who called for further research into the link between marriage and physical stress.

Reference

Saxbe, D. E., Repetti, R. L., Nishina, A. (2008). Marital satisfaction, recovery from work, and diurnal cortisol among men and women. Health Psychology, 27, 15-25.


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