Can A Crazy Relationship Make You Sick?

Nothing beats a happy, supportive long-term relationship. It may take us a while to get there, but it should come as no surprise that there are clear and well-documented health benefits to, as your Mom might say, having met someone nice and finally settled down.

But what about the ones that weren't “keepers?” What about all those dysfunctional fixer-uppers that took you for a ride on an emotional roller coaster? Those relationships that you really, really tried to make work but in the end were just too much effort for not enough return? Or the ones you look back upon with a face-palm and a muttered, “What was I thinking?”

So, if eventually finding your soul mate is good for your health, what kind of toll did all those losers take?

A team of researchers at the University of Buffalo in New York decided to find out, and just published their results in the Journal of Family Psychology.

As it turns out, there is a direct correlation between bad relationships and depressive symptoms, alcohol problems, and lower scores of self-reported health.

The scientists used data from the Iowa Youth and Families Project. The original purpose of the project was to study variations in rural family resilience to economic stress stemming from the farm crisis of the 1980s. The dataset from which the Buffalo researchers drew was a sample of all-white young adults coming from two-parent homes in rural Iowa. The team measured the participants’ relationship changes, as well as their physical and mental health, over a two-year period. They asked questions about overall relationship satisfaction, criticism, and support in the relationships, affection and commitment, and what the participants’ partners were like outside of the relationship.

What's more, the research indicates that those with experience in positive romances were also more likely to leave a future bad relationship that put their health at risk.

As the authors summarized, “This is particularly important during the transition to adulthood when instability in romantic relationships is expected to be common.”

It seems that it really, demonstrably, is “better to have loved and lost.”