Social relationships are a central part of life and are among the most important predictors of health and mortality (Holt-Lunstad, 2018). Relationships also offer resources that help individuals adapt to changes they encounter across development (Antonucci, Ajrouch, & Birditt, 2014; Uchino, Ong, Queen, & Kent De Grey, 2016).

There are key ways in which relationship quality might be related to healthy aging

In particular, the quality of marital relationships has emerged as an important predictor of health throughout adulthood, and associations between marital relationship quality and health have been found both concurrently and longitudinally spanning a range of age groups (Robles, Slatcher, Trombello, & McGinn, 2014). Although some work has suggested links between marital status and well-being, with some reports suggesting married people enjoy health benefits over their unmarried counterparts (N. J. Johnson, Backlund, Sorlie, & Loveless, 2000), there is accumulating evidence demonstrating that marital quality may be more consequential for health than marital status alone (Gove, Hughes, & Style Briggs, 1983; Holt-Lunstad, Birmingham, & Jones, 2008). For example, one investigation showed that higher marital relationship quality was linked to indicators of physical and psychological health (e.g., lower ambulatory blood pressure, lower stress) (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2008). Читать далее →