The saying “happy wife, happy life” may have some validity, but the lesser-known saying “anxious wife, miserable life” has research-approved validation.
How can we overcome anxiety and improve marital satisfaction?
What does it take for a happy marriage?
A 2023 study by Yang et al asked each member of the 9,560 couples surveyed to answer the following questions:
- How happy are you in your marriage?
- How neurotic are you?
- How anxious are you?
- How many children do you have?
- How much support do you have from other adult family members?
These questions sought to identify what traits and states can make or break a happy marriage.
The results found a direct relationship between the following:
- The number of children you have and marital satisfaction, with fewer children being related to happier marriages.
- The number of family members who are available to help with the children is directly related to greater marital satisfaction.
- Both partners’ level of depression affected their level of happiness: lower levels of depression are associated with happier marriages.
- The more neurotic the spouse is, the less happy the relationship—but women’s neuroticism seems to carry more weight in the overall marital happiness equation.
What is neuroticism?
Think of the young mother who is more fearful than she would like to admit when the school bus pulls away with her daughter safely buckled in for the five-minute ride to school.
Imagine the man who forces himself to check and double-check his front door to ensure that he has locked it. Think of the woman who repeatedly checks to see if her straightening iron is unplugged.
Someone who is neurotic may be quick to startle at an unexpected noise and easily frightened in ambiguous situations such as walking to their car at night in a familiar surrounding.
Neurotic people assume the worst in an innocuous situation. They fear an unknown danger around every corner because you just don’t know what can happen.
Both parents responded to the following questions about their level of neuroticism, from 1 (completely disagree) to 5 (completely agree).
- I am often worried.
- I easily become nervous.
Higher numbers indicated more emotional insecurity. The results?
Women will often trip over their high levels of neurosis and stumble into unhappiness in their marriage
The neurotic tendency toward anxiety and depression can overshadow the positives, such as having a lot of family support and having a low score on a measure of depression.
For neurotic women, their brain may be the biggest opponent in the quest for a happy marriage.
How can we make our marriages happier?
- Improve your mental health through therapy. Research estimates that half of the people who go to therapy start to feel “better” in the first four to five months of treatment. Want to feel better faster? Talk to your therapist about attending therapy twice a week.
- Anxiety is particularly harmful to women. Physical symptoms such as headaches, nausea, dizziness, stomachaches, and other gastrointestinal problems are commonly reported.
- Ask for help when help is available—this means asking your spouse for help when you feel overwhelmed and taking advantage of your family and friends-like- family who live nearby.
To find a therapist, please visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.