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	Research summary Staying Silent in Marital Spats (is) a Killer for Women By Anne Harding Psychosomatic Medicine, July/August 2007 via Reuters in Yahoo News, 8-20-07*

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       This article is one of a series describing effective thinking, communicating, and problem-solving concepts. The series summarizes seven learnable communication (relationship) skills that are essential for building high-nurturance relationships and resolving internal and social conflicts effectively. See my commentary after the summary

        The unique guidebook Satisfactions (Xlibris.com, 2001) integrates the key Project-2 Web articles and resources in this nonprofit Web site, and provides many practical resources.        

        Before continuing, stop and reflect - why are you reading this - what do you need?

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Women who force themselves to stay quiet during marital arguments appear to have a higher risk of death, a new study shows. Depression and irritable bowel syndrome are also more common in these women.

Such "self-silencing" during conflict may have provided an evolutionary survival advantage long ago, and unfortunately may be a necessity for women in abusive relationships, Dr. Elaine D. Eaker of Eaker Epidemiology Enterprises in Gaithersburg, Maryland, the study's lead author, told Reuters Health.

Eaker and her colleagues found that, over a 10-year period, the most striking finding was that women who self-silenced were four times more likely to die than women who expressed themselves freely during marital arguments.

The current study is the first, Eaker says, to look at behavior, heart disease and mortality in the context of marital relationships. While many studies have looked into marital status and quality and heart disease, she added, "We had some other questions that I think get more at the dynamics of how people really feel in a marriage, what actually happens in a marriage."

Eaker and her team looked at 3,682 men and women participating in the Framingham Offspring Study, most of whom were in their 40s and 50s at the beginning of the study. Study participants were followed for 10 years for the development of heart disease and for death from any cause.

The study confirmed that marriage is good for men's health - compared with unmarried men, husbands were nearly half as likely to die during the follow-up period.

The researchers also found that men whose wives came home from work upset about their jobs were 2.7 times as likely to develop heart disease as men with less work-stressed wives.

It's possible, Eaker and her team suggest, that a wife's problems on the job could be upsetting to a husband because he is unable to "protect" her in this arena.

"Attention has been focused on the changing roles of women," they note in the July/August issue of Psychosomatic Medicine, "the changing roles and expectations of husbands/men also need to be scrutinized and understood."

The findings underscore the importance of healthy communication within marriage, Eaker says, although she does urge that other researchers confirm the results "before we make a lot out of them."

Nevertheless, she concludes, "both spouses really need to allow another person a safe environment to express feelings when they're in conflict," both for their own health, and for the health of the relationship.


Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

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Perspective

        Adults' and kids' protective false selves minimize, repress, or ignore significant emotions, thoughts, and needs when they feel...

• unworthy or inept - e.g. stupid, guilty, and/or ashamed; and...

• unsafe - i.e. they fear that expressing themselves honestly will invite social scorn, rejection, criticism, rage, loss, or revenge.

       These are usually symptoms of two underlying problems: serious psychological wounds from childhood trauma and ignorance of effective-communication skills. Until true (vs. pseudo) self-motivated recovery, these wounds and unawareness combine to degrade health, relationships, and longevity in many ways. Both of these primary problems come from a toxic cycle that passes silently down the generations until someone intentionally breaks it.

        This study proposes a surface cause ("self-silencing") of significant problems (female depression + irritable bowel syndrome + death), but not the root causes or what to do about them. This report illustrates the current widespread public and professional ignorance of the [wounds + unawareness] cycle and its major personal and social effects.

       From 28 years' professional research, I propose a (preventable) cause of psychological wounds, and Project 1 as an effective way to identify and reduce the wounds over time. Project 2 in this nonprofit Web site explains and illustrates seven related skills that can improve anyone's thinking and communicating effectiveness over time.

        Project 8 offers guidelines for mutually-satisfying primary relationships, including requisites for effective problem-solving between partners. 

       The guidebooks for Projects 1 and 2 are "Who's Really Running Your Life?" (Xlibris.com, 2002, 2nd ed.), and Satisfactions (Xlibris.com, 2002). The guidebook for Project 8 is "The Remarriage Book" (Xlibris. com, 2002).

        Also see this related research summary on the value of articulating your emotions.

        Pause, breathe, and recall why you read this. Did you get what you needed? If not, what do you need? Who's answering these questions - your wise, resident true Self (capital "S"), or "someone else"?

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