Closeness Calls

Mick Jagger says he can't get no satisfaction, Bono still hasn't found whathe's looking for, and Steve Winwood wants someone to bring him a higher love. They clearly aren't your average guys.

According to a University of Michigan study, most men in relationships are too easy to please. And they get even mellower with age.

The Michigan researchers interviewed—separately—husbands and wives who had worked through decades of marital war and peace. The subjects were asked how much support—respect, reassurance, confiding—they gave to or got from their spouse. Then the volunteers responded to questions like, "How satisfied are you with your sex life? With your marriage?"

A husband's sense of satisfaction with his marriage was unrelated to how he judged the quality of his interactions with his wife, reports University of Michigan psychologist Linda Acitelli, Ph.D. Conversely, a woman's evaluation of both her individual happiness and her relationship satisfaction was closely tied to her perception of marital support.

In other words, she's happy if she's in a supportive, intimate union; he's fine with or without the pillow talk. The gender gap was so dramatic that Acitelli concludes "it's the status of being married that's the important thing for men."

The data were particularly striking for older couples. Perhaps, Acitelli conjectures, older men take support for granted and simply "expect the nurturant role from their wives" after 40 years of marriage.

In any case, maintaining an intimate bond is a matter of life and death for men. Research has shown that married men are much healthier and happier than their bachelor brothers. Government demographer Paul

C. Glick, Ph.D., once went so far as to figure that "being married is about twice as advantageous to men as to women" in terms of continued survival.