Being a single guy has long been thought to be more stressful and now a new study confirms that being married alters your hormones in a way that reduces stress. And you don't need a marriage license to benefit as unmarried people in a committed, romantic relationship show the same reduced responses to stress, according to researcher Dario Maestripieri at the University of Chicago. "These results suggest that single and unpaired individuals are more responsive to psychological stress than married individuals, a finding consistent with a growing body of evidence showing that marriage and social support can buffer against stress," said Maestripieri, who was the lead researcher in the study.
Maestripieri's findings involved measuring cortisol levels in the subjects as they underwent stressful experiences. Cortisol is known as the stress hormone.
"We found that unpaired individuals of both sexes had higher cortisol levels than married individuals," Maestripieri said. "Although marriage can be pretty stressful, it should make it easier for people to handle other stressors in their lives. What we found is that marriage has a dampening effect on cortisol responses to psychological stress, and that is very new."
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Source: University of Chicago
