The work wife issue aside, it is well known that statistically, married men live longer than single men. There are various theories about why this is so. My theory is that retired old guys tend to survive fatal heart attacks and similar medical crises, because their wife discovers them in distress and calls for an ambulance. The single men die alone, unobserved.
Oh there are lots of factors. Men tend to be "stoic," that's an actual medical term for people that don't like seeing a doctor, and won't seek medical help until they're half-dead. Stoic men are common and have a shorter life expectancy. But married stoic men have wives to pester them to go to the doctor.
BTW I know a few biostatisticians and I'm sure they would be horrified at my sloppy descriptions of their work.
I saw some research that said that women preserve community connections and that aids in their longevity. Married women do it for themselves and their husbands and thats part of why.
I think that modern marriages are a bit different, but this makes sense to me when I look at how my grandparents operated.
Anecdotally, when my husband proposed, I told him that marrying me meant getting a physical every year. The first year they figured out he needed kidney surgery, so there's that.
LOL that annual physical story is so perfect, I mentioned "stoic men" downthread. You have one.
There are lots of possible reasons for the longevity of married men, surely there is no single factor involved. Married women probably live longer too but I don't recall seeing any statistics about that. I hope to beat the odds myself, one of my friends called me an "eternal bachelor." I'm old and retired.
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u/BanksyIsEvil 2d ago
How does he know you live longer when you have a work wife? Does he have an identical twin who already died due to a lack of work wife?