Study: Spouse's Personality May Be Hazardous To Your Health

According to a new study reported in Science Daily:

...there is now evidence suggesting that your spouse's personality can have a major influence on your own ability to recover from - and perhaps even survive - a major challenge to your health.

Yes, you read that correctly.

The main finding was that when looking at married couples, the personality of one partner predicted the depression level of their counterpart post surgery. In other words a partner's personality traits are important determinants of own long-term emotional and physical recovery from major health challenges.

For example, a patient married to a generally neurotic and anxious spouse was more likely to report symptoms of depression after surgery. Of course, someone married to a generally neurotic person is likely to have issues regardless of having surgery. But when a person has major health challenges they are particularly dependent on their spouse for care. If that spouse has significant issues, the condition has an even more pronounced effect on the recovering individual.

But there was an exception. If the patient was happily married to the neurotic, anxious individual, there was no harm. However, if the patient was unhappily married then the spousal neuroticism negatively effected recovery. As the researchers stated, this study would appear to support the notion that "love conquers all."