Partners May Live Longer When They Drink Together

Your partner's drinking habits could affect your lifespan, new research suggests.

Scientists have long suspected that couples who have similar drinking patterns tend to have better marital outcomes, reporting both better quality and longer lasting marriages. However, the impacts of these shared drinking patterns on overall health have so far been understudied.

To investigate these effects, researchers from the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research recruited a cohort of 4,656 married or cohabiting heterosexual couples over the age of 50 in the United States and interviewed them every two years for at least six years between 1996 and 2016. Participants reported whether they had drunk alcohol in the last three months and, if so, the average amount they drank per week. Their results were published in the journal The Gerontologist.

By analyzing this data, the researchers found that spouses who had similar drinking habits tended to live longer than couples where one spouse drank and the other did not. However, longevity followed a u-shaped curve when average drinks per week were considered among individuals and their partners, with highest survival rates among light drinkers.

"The purpose was to look at alcohol use in couples in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and the implications for mortality," said study lead Kira Birditt, a research professor at the Institute for Social Research. "And we found, interestingly, that couples in which both indicated drinking alcohol in the last three months lived longer than the other couples that either both indicated not drinking or had discordant drinking patterns in which one drank and the other did not."

However, it is important to note that these findings are not necessarily recommending you drink more with your spouse. Indeed, even low levels of drinking have been associated with adverse effects on brain health and sleep. Even so, these results add to a wealth of evidence that your partner's habits and relationship quality can impact your own health and longevity.

"We don't know why both partners drinking is associated with better survival," Birditt said. "There is also little information about the daily interpersonal processes that account for these links. Future research should assess the implications of couple drinking patterns for daily marital quality, and daily physical health outcomes."

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