Letters to the Editor
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What is glossed over
and I suspect more and more it is a "political correctness" based aftereffect, is that all anger is considered equally bad (women are excluded from this and can abuse as they please, this only counts for men)
The reality is that while it is true that uncontrolled outbursts or excuses to abuse people are bad, for others and for oneself and one's health, RIGHTEOUS ANGER, controlled logical protest is very good, both in bringing up issues and in portraying the person as concerned, and thus invested in the situation.
Some study said a few years ago that people who expressed themselves righteously were viewed better because people felt that the person had an investment in a situation. At least, I think that was the conclusion they had come to.
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They don't want the other spouse to have the last word
Ha!
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Married couples who fight live longer
It's out of spite.
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Well ONE of them lives longer, at any rate.
The other one's gonna get ninjitsu ass-kicked by the cops.
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Sounds like you're bringing some baggage to the table on this...
In the context of the study it seems to me that the word "fight" is a perfectly reasonable, universally recognized term for the process couples go through in airing out their anger and disagreements, ultimately leading to a resolution. The study wasn't titled "People in Abusive Relationships Live Longer," it was just about people who fight. And while that word "fight" may be inextricably linked to out of control rage and violence in your mind, I don't think that is the case for most people.
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Lowering Your Level of Stress
I do think it is very important for one's overall health to not accumulate too much stress. My 10 cent analysis would be that the 'suppressors' are maintaining a higher stress level & the bad results of that can been seen statistically.
Some of our more colorful posters here might actually be using these forums to 'blow off steam' and thus lower their stress levels.
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the term fight comes in variances of degrees
The term "bicker" being on the lowest end of the scale, the term "explosive rage" being on the highest. I would imagine that there are many different degrees of fighting that fall somewhere in between. I've noticed that many of the more healthy, happy couples I know engage more frequently in a mild form of bickering than the more miserable ones, who tend towards a slow burn. There needs to be an outlet provided somewhere, & a safety valve that provides a slow, steady stream of relief is alot less dangerous than an explosive, faulty pressure cooker.
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I agree that fight is too aggressive a description
In my mind, fight connotes a situation where one person wins and one person loses; a disagreement or discussion is what happens when two people resolve a conflict together. I hate fighting, really hate it, it causes a lot of stress for me; and I wouldn't stay in a relationship that had a lot of fighting.
And I agree with the study that lots of people don't know how to resolve conflicts; it was one of the hardest things for me to learn in my own relationships, partly because my parents never had conflicts in front of me so I never had a role model for resolving them. It's not that one or the other was beaten down and never disagreed, I learned later that they had some real differences; but those were always kept away from us kids. I try to have discussions in front of my kids where we show how to listen and compromise.
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Baloney either way
Nowhere near a large enough sample size, ambiguous criteria, and far too many variables.
17 years went into this study? Yikes.
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Sample size
192 couples? Almost 400 people...that's not a big enough sample size? Just curious, what is considered the lowest sample size to draw conclusions from? I thought it could be as low as 30?
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Statistics
Been a while since I worked in statistics, but the sample size is not even CLOSE to being sufficient in order to suffice and meet any significance levels.
Why do I keep seeing these sorts of studies out there these days? Used to be, even twin studies had to have at least 300+ individual PAIRS to be considered valid.
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Depends...
It depends on what you're studying. If you're going to separate these people into 4 categories and then measure bow long they live based on those categories, you need a lot more people. I'd guess at least three or four times as many.
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Fuck the study
My highly-educated, very successful parents fought like crazy, except when they had company. Apparently, they would make-up and make love at some point, but none of us knew that as we cowered in our beds listening to them scream at each other every fucking night. It was a nightmare that stretched over many years.
I believe they have a term for it now: secondary abuse. Not sure, but i think i heard that somewhere.
My brother committed suicide at 31, my sister overdosed at 45 ... me? Sober a long time.
Everybody is dead. But hey, it's peaceful.
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Can't unring the bell
When you fight, you're still responsible for what you say. If you fight just to win, just to get over, you'll say ANYTHING. That can be fatal to a relationship.
As Carson McCullers observed, you can tell your beloved "I love you" a thousand times, and he will still doubt you. But if you say "I hate you" just once, he'll believe it forever.
Then the question may be whether you'll live longer as a married person or a divorced person.
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We never fight
And we're concerned about that, so we tried to fight a few times, because we thought we should, for our health and longevity, but we ended up getting silly and laughing and having sex.
He seriously does nothing that angers me. I remember a few years ago, I think I got miffed at him for some reason. I don't remember what. I told him he miffed me and he said he was sorry he didn't mean to miff me, and then we talked about miffiness and got to laughing and had sex.
It's hopeless for us. Maybe there's a pill we can take.
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Another problem...
...with the way this study is being analyzed. You cannot say that because people who fight die X amount later it's the fighting that caused them to die later. A certain type of person tends to fight or not fight; a certain type of person tends to marry another certain type of person, and they tend to do so at a certain age, and so on and so on. There is a maze of variables here, featuring an endless number of permutations, and frankly, I don't see how this information can possibly be useful, especially given the sample size.
I acknowledge that these sorts of studies cannot be carried out in anything resembling lab conditions, but it's still important to keep in mind the nature of statistics and how these sorts of studies are ideally supposed to work. Data always distort and thus never produce an exact, perfectly clear picture of anything, but the idea is to isolate variables so that you've got as little distortion as possible. The clarity of the lens through which we observe an alleged phenomenon determines how useful the information can be.
This study is so far from the ideal that one must be very, very careful in analyzing it for the purpose of gleaning anything useful. Sure, it's no lab experiment, but if, say, the FDA used standards this loose we'd probably all be dead by now.