Would It Kill You to Keep Your Mouth Shut?

by WiredBerries Editors — October 15, 2007

If you're a woman, it might. Researchers put marital spats under the microscope and found that the way women fight with their spouse can seriously affect their health--particularly if the woman bottled up her feelings. The study found that for men, keeping quiet during a conflict didn't have any measurable effect on their health. Conversely, women who didn't speak their minds during a fight were four times as likely to die during the 10-year study period, as compared with women who always told their husbands how they felt. Interestingly, whether the woman reported being in a happy marriage or an unhappy marriage, the risk remained the same.

The tendency to keep quiet during a fight is known as self-silencing. For men, it may be but a harmless decision to "keep the peace." But if women stay quiet, it appears to actually cause significant physical damage. "When you're suppressing communication and feelings during conflict with your husband, it's doing something very negative to your physiology, and in the long term it will affect your health," said Elaine Eaker, an epidemiologist in Gaithersburg, Md., who was the study's lead author. "This doesn't mean women should start throwing plates at their husbands, but there needs to be a safe environment where both spouses can equally communicate."

Similar studies led by Dana Crowley Jack, a professor of interdisciplinary studies at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington, linked the self-silencing trait to a variety of psychological and physical health risks, including depression, eating disorders, and heart disease. Keeping quiet during a fight with a spouse is something "we all have to do sometimes," Dr. Jack said. "But we worry about the people who do it in a more extreme fashion."