How Your Fight with Your Partner (and how they fight with YOU) Effects Your Health (and Theirs)

When they say, "You're going to give me a heart attack," they could be right.

Read the full article here: Marital Spats, Taken to Heart - New York Times
RESEARCH CONFIRMING THAT EMOTIONS EFFECT YOUR WELLNESS ... In interesting ways

The way you fight with your spouse can affect your health (and theirs)

From the article:

--32 percent of the men and 23 percent of the women said they typically bottled up their feelings during a marital spat. In men, keeping quiet during a fight didn’t have any measurable effect on health. But women who didn’t speak their minds in those fights were four times as likely to die during the 10-year study period as women who always told their husbands how they felt (from Psychosomatic Medicine).

--Whether the woman reported being in a happy marriage or an unhappy marriage didn’t change her risk.

--According to Dana Crowley Jack, a professor of interdisciplinary studies at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash., the self-silencing trait is linked to numerous psychological and physical health risks, including depression, eating disorders and heart disease.

--The emotional tone that men and women take during arguments with a spouse
can also take a toll. The style of argument was a powerful predictor for a man or woman’s risk for underlying heart disease.

--The way the couple interacted was as important a heart risk factor as whether they smoked or had high cholesterol. (Timothy W. Smith, a psychology professor at the University of Utah)

--For women, whether a husband’s arguing style was warm or hostile had the biggest effect on her heart health. A warm style of arguing by either spouse lowered the wife’s risk of heart disease.

--Arguing style affected men and women differently. The level of warmth or hostility had no effect on a man’s heart health. For a man, heart risk increased if disagreements with his wife involved a battle for control. And it didn’t matter whether he or his wife was the one making the controlling comments. **

--Cardiovascular risk was only related to the quality of the couple’s bickering style.

**Example: Man arguing with his wife says: “You really should just listen to me on this."

LEARNING HOW TO MANAGE YOUR EMOTIONS CAN EFFECT YOUR WELLNESS -- AND THAT OF THOSE AROUND YOU. TAKE THE EQ COURSE TO LEARN MORE.