Family Strife May Increase Risk of Premature Death in Women

“Every day there are fresh blows that scorch my heart. And these scorching blows, shorten my life” – wrote Leo Tolstoy’s wife, Sonya Tolstoy, about her relationship with her husband. Notably, a study published in an NY Times article, Marital Spats, Taken to Heart, indicates that Sonya may have had a point about family conflict’s negative effect on a woman’s life expectancy.

An article published on levanco.com discussing these matters states the following:

There’s no measurable health effect on men who keep quiet during arguments with their wives. But women who didn’t speak their minds – who engage in “self-silencing” — were four times as likely to die during the next ten years. Whether the self-silencing woman reported a happy or unhappy marriage didn’t change her health risk. Self-silencing has also been linked to depression, eating disorders and heart disease.