When Spouses Grouse

Forget personality. The link between behavior and heart disease is how you handle negative emotions, specifically your anger. And in the shared environment of marriage, your anger-coping style can profoundly affect not only your own but your spouse's health.

In a study that followed 192 couples, nine out of 12 men who died of cancer were married to women who suppressed anger, University of Michigan researchers found Men's anger suppression affected the cancer toll among women, but especially when both were suppressors.

Anger-coping styles also affected the cardiovascular health of husbands and wives, Mara Julius, Ph.D., reported to the Society of Behavioral Medicine. Wives were likely to die of cardiovascular disease if they were high on the anger-suppression index--but even more likely if their husbands also suppressed their anger.

Men's cardiovascular mortality risk, on the other hand, was not affected by their wives' anger-coping style. The husbands' own anger-suppression was a substantial risk in its own right.

"Basic emotions, if suppressed, can cause changes in the balance of our daily routines," Julius explains. We may take on health-compromising habits in response to unreleased emotions. Disrupted patterns, especially of sleep, may also influence the immune system in its etemal vigilance against cancer.

But why are men and women affected differently? She points to differences in the support each partner provides the other. Men may be especially dependent on their wives for emotional and instrumental support, and this may be withheld if she suppresses anger.

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