Introduction
Marriage, wedding or any term alike is a happy occasion for both the bride and the groom. I remember the first time I attended one of my friend's wedding. The bride looks so beautiful and the groom looks so handsome, there is a lot of simple but creative flower arrangement around the bridal stage, fancy foods and drinks and the most important thing is everyone look so happy. In Malaysia, especially for Malay people, marrying someone at a young age of 20 years old is considered a norm. The sooner the better they said, people can usually get married as long as they are 18 years old and above (though under 20 years old might be considered as too young to be married to someone); but of course, it will depend on several factors that influence acceptance towards said marriage such as cultures, financials and religions. In some religions, people are allowed to marry someone as long as they have reached puberty (girls are usually earlier than boys) but marrying someone who is under 18 years old will subject them to ridicule and negative social judgement which can impact both of the husband and wife in a negative kinda way.
Recently, there is a controversial case of a man who resides in Kelantan, Malaysia, who was married to an 11 years old girl which he claimed to be in love with for almost 4 years (he loves her when she was 7 years old? I don't know); the wedding ceremony was held in Thailand and it is witnessed by both of her parents. In one news article, he said that he wanted to help the girl's family, financially, and took her (I will assume it's a condition) as his 3rd wives without the permission of his other wives so that it would be convenient for him to meddle with the girl's family affairs. For me personally, even if a man can marry up to 4 wives in Islam (if they are capable of taking care of them), marrying an 11 years old girl is just too much. He can help the girl's family as much as he wanted but don't ever use it as a reason to justify his own predicament, I'm sure there are other ways to help them. I would rant this for as long as it is needed (I know I could) but this article is never intended for such purposes. In this article, we will explore how marriage can influence individuals' well being and what is possibly going to happen if one of the spouses died.
There are a lot of benefits and protective effects of marriage that can be imposed on both, the husband and the wife, in terms of physical and emotional well-being. Numerous studies have found that marriages can optimise health and thus give a better shot for people at longevity but whether or not it would result in a way which can be considered beneficial for the couple, would depend on several factors such as marriage quality and problems that might have arisen throughout married life; I mean you will not live long if you were married to an abusive partner. Regardless, according to a review journal written by Loscocco & Walzer in 2013, marriage is especially important for women as it has been somewhat central to their roles. Women are more specialised in emotions and creating a nurturing environment for their spouses and children while men usually focus on working on things that are "outside". It's, therefore reasonable to think that, in a relationship, whether it is nurtured or began to crumble, women are the one who usually felt more responsible towards upholding them (Source).
It is not my intention to say that men are bad but it's pointless to compete with women in such things. I'm a man, and I felt responsible for my own relationship but my fiance might have been more involved in it than I hate to admit. We have a certain degree of awareness regarding responsibilities towards our relationship but it's better for us to focus on something that we are actually good at; trying to maintain the integrity of our own relationship through other means. When do you think people who are married will spend most of their times together (both man and woman contribute equally to their married life)? If you are thinking about newlyweds, then you are wrong (unless you were married when you are 60 years old and above); it's the elderly. As an individual gets older (especially when they are 60 years and above), they will be retiring from their works which would restrict their contact with their own colleagues and free up their minds of work-related burdens. This will lead to an increase in social interactions between both, the husband and the wife as other factors such as the urges to connect through online social networking, interaction with other siblings and family-related responsibility might have subsided (Kulik, 2012).
Three Stages Of Behavioural Changes Throughout Married Life
There are a lot of behavioural models which have been developed by different researchers to explain behavioural changes associated with marriage. People seem to get easily disappointed by the fact that their partners started to change a few months/years after they married but according to science, these changes are normal and perhaps vital for the development of healthy relationships between both husband and wife. I am especially interested in one particular concept which explained the changes in a three stage-model. According to Michael Gurian, an American social philosopher, people who are married will experience these three stages:
- Romance
- Disillusionment
- Power Struggle
It seems simple compared to the other marriage-related behavioural models but it is important for us to understand that, even though when you found someone who kinda "clicked" with your attitude or what you have been wanting in a woman (ideal), a man's brain and a woman's brain is quite different when it comes to accomplishing certain tasks which include loving someone; the key is to bring this differences together in order to achieve a happy, long-term marriage.
Romance
People want to be happy and being in love with someone else can certainly give the sense of being so. It's a fact that during this stage, a love hormone (or usually known as the cuddle hormone) called the oxytocin is at its peak. For those who are not familiar with this kind of hormone, oxytocins are usually secreted by the pituitary gland (specifically by the posterior lobe) to exert different effects in both men and women. In women, oxytocins are important in birth processes as it helps them during labour by providing a degree of uterine contraction to facilitate the delivery. It's also a hormone which is responsible for allowing a baby to suckle out milk from their mother's breast. People rarely know that a surge of oxytocins during pregnancies can affect mother's behaviours in a certain way after the baby has been born; in other words, a mother would behave differently (in a certain degree) partly because of the level of oxytocin during her pregnancy.
A study which has been published in the Journal of Psychological Sciences in 2007 has found that, mothers with high level of oxytocins in their circulatory system during the first trimester of pregnancy are more likely to engage in a bonding behaviour with their respective child i.e. singing to them, caring for them earnestly and frequently plays with them. It's actually unfair and most of the times, not true, to relate people with low level of oxytocins during pregnancy with poor capacity for them to care for their children but oxytocins seem to motivate both the mother and the child to bond with each other while forming some kind of mental connection between them that will certainly make the job much easier; oh by the way, when we are interacting with babies, their oxytocins will rise too. It's then reasonable to assume that oxytocins play an important role in motivation, social connection hence, romantic relationship between two people.
What about men? Oxytocins seem to have some kind of fidelity effect in men when they are supplied with enough of that hormones. I think I remember reading somewhere on the internet (among all of the journals for this article) about a study that concluded a high level of oxytocins in men, can strengthen their fidelity towards one partner. In that particular study, a group of man was given a nasal spray of oxytocin while the other was given a nasal spray of saline solution. After that, they were placed in a room, full of attractive women and the group which received nasal sprays of oxytocin seem to sit further away from women compared to those who were receiving placebo (mind you, all of the subjects are in some form of relationships). The oxytocin being given seems to bolster the men's fidelity to their respective partner.
During the first stage of marriage which is called as "romance phase", oxytocins are at its best. We love to speak with each other, feeling motivated to help each other no matter how bad the situation is and sure, flaws or any irritating qualities seem to be hidden (you will find few to none of those). Oxytocins will become the biological motivational booster that will allow you to feel satisfied with the woman you are currently in love with. You will find more similarities between each other than differences and it's worth noting that (although people who are in love seldom noticed), the difficult part of the relationship will soon emerge. It is therefore biased to compare a successful relationship by measuring how happy they are, solely.
Disillusionment and Power Struggle
Even though disillusionment and power struggle is classified under two different stages, in my opinion, there are some degrees of overlapping when we consider where they are in the relationship timeline. During the disillusionment stage, the hormone oxytocin will start to wear down which would accentuate the partner's negative behaviours. These changes would usually be compensated by a stage called the "Power Struggle", whereby either one of the partners will try to change said negative behaviours of the other partner back to how it was in the romance phase to restore the level of oxytocins back to its former peak; oxytocins seem to play an important role in maintaining feeling for each other and you were addicted by it. People seem to forget that they are different; men and women accomplish things in a different way in which the method to achieve such solutions might have been unacceptable for another. Women will start to feel rejected especially when their partners were no longer interested in conversing with them like they used to do in the romance phase and men, can't seem to understand why she nags all the time.
There are some patterns of behavioural changes that took place after the romance phase has subsided for both husband and wife which could have stemmed from their own learned behaviours of different genders; men will prefer to have more independent activities and women will start to socialise more with their friends and neighbours. So if this is considered as the latter stage of marriage, are all of them doomed to fail? Not necessarily. Being committed or responsible for a relationship is often difficult than people thought it is. The key is to understand despite all of the similarities that we seek during the early phase of marriage, we will end up with finding a lot of differences between one another. It's natural for them to behave in that particular way and it is often irreversible. Trying to raise your satisfaction by changing the other behaviours would often lead to complications, abuses or worst, dissolution of marriage. It is worth noting that, the level of our oxytocin would only increase if we seek to discover new things about your partner rather than trying to change them. For those things to be accomplished, both need to be willing to compromise.
True Love Kills; The Widowhood Effect
Does being married could lead to a healthy life? Probably. There are a few studies which have been conducted to measure the happiness level and well-being among couples but there are a lot of limitations and for some, inaccuracies. The opinion of whether marriage can lead to a healthy life or not can stem purely from experiences especially if people who are being questioned were raised in an abusive family. Among all of the health issues that could have arisen from marriage, the widowhood effect probably one of the most interesting phenomena which could have signified, emotional well-being is one of the factors that could have been bolstered through marriage. The effect seems to occur for both genders, it is a condition whereby the probability for a person of either gender to die increases following the death of their long-term spouses. The mechanism that could have led to death is poorly understood but some studies indicate that it is related to some sort of pathological grief-related mechanism; the effect is the most profound among elderly people.
The "golden period" for people to become grief-stricken that might went pathological is 6 months. According to a study conducted by Martikainen P et al in 1996, for the first 3 months, the risk of death was estimated between 30% to 90% which would depend on various factors such as the mechanism of death, any unresolved issues, comorbidities etc.; after 3 months, the risk was estimated to be around 15%. A large-scale study which was conducted in 2008 by Felix Elwert et al has found that among 373, 189 couples, around 318, 000 couples experienced death from 17 causes of death within 9 years. There are a lot of variables which have been considered including health information of each and every one of the participants involved and the causes of death which followed after the death of spouses are specific. Most of them experience death due to the following diseases mostly from cardiovascular categories:
- Cerebral vascular accident
- Congestive heart failure
- Ischaemic heart disease
- Vascular diseases
This is a serious public health issue that should be addressed. It amplifies the importance of widows to have some form of social interaction, probably with each other, to overcome grief and deal it in the healthiest possible way. Obviously, since we have (probably) acknowledged that men and women, both have different ways of perceiving issues, they were affected by a different kind of reasons of their spouses' death; for example, men are usually affected by how their spouses died (accident, being murdered) while women concerned that their spouses died regardless of the reasons. It is the anticipatory death that influenced both genders all the same; if they have times to prepare, there will be less consequences.
Sources
- Happy Marriage, Happy Life? Marital Quality and Subjective Well-Being in Later Life
- The Science of a Happy Marriage
- Oxytocin: Facts About the 'Cuddle Hormone'
- The Effect of Widowhood on Mortality by the Causes of Death of Both Spouses
- Mortality after death of spouse in relation to duration of bereavement in Finland.
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