Partner May Be Negative Influence on Health | Psych Central News

By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on August 19, 2011

Historically, researchers have found that being in a committed relationship is associated with an improved health status for both partners.

Studies have shown that faithful individuals display positive habits such as scheduling regular health physicals, are more likely to stop smoking and have lower rates of cardiovascular disease.

However, new research suggests married straight couples and cohabiting gay and lesbian couples in long-term intimate relationships may pick up each other?s unhealthy habits as well.

Corinne Reczek, a University of Cincinnati assistant professor of sociology, reports that long-term, intimate relationships can also lead to unhealthy habits.

Reczek discovered three paths by which unhealthy habits are promoted: through the direct bad influence of one partner, through health habit synchronicity and through the notion of personal responsibility.

Reczek reports that gay, lesbian and straight couples all described the ?bad influence? theme, while in straight partnerships, men were nearly always viewed as the ?bad influence.?

?The finding that one partner is a ?direct bad influence? suggests that individuals converge in health habits across the course of their relationship, because one individual?s unhealthy habits directly promotes the other?s unhealthy habits,? reports Reczek. An example would be how both partners eat the unhealthy foods that one partner purchases.

?Gay and lesbian couples nearly exclusively described how the habits of both partners were simultaneously promoted due to unhealthy habit synchronicity.

?For these individuals, one partner may not engage in what they consider an unhealthy habit on their own, but when their desire for such a habit is matched by their partners, they partake in unhealthy habits,? writes Reczek.

?Third, respondents utilized a discourse of personal responsibility to describe how even when they observe their partner partaking in an unhealthy habit, they do not attempt to change the habit, indicating that they were complicit in sustaining their partner?s unhealthy habits.

?The final theme was described primarily by straight men and women,? says Reczek.

Reczek adds that the study is among the first of its kind to examine how gay and lesbian couples promote each other?s unhealthy habits.

In the study, Reczek and her team conducted in-depth interviews with 122 people involved in long-term straight or married relationships (31 couples), gay partnerships (15 couples) and lesbian relationships (15 couples), who had been together between eight and 52 years.

Participants were individually asked a series of open-ended questions about smoking, drinking, food consumption, sleep patterns, exercise habits and other health habits.

?Particular attention was paid to how partners shaped each of these habits,? writes Reczek.

?While previous research focuses nearly exclusively on how intimate relationships ? particularly marriage ? are health-promoting, these findings extend this research to argue that intimate partners are cognizant of the ways in which they promote the unhealthy habits of one another,? states Reczek.

Source: University of Cincinnati

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Source: http://psychcentral.com/news/2011/08/19/partner-may-be-negative-influence-on-health/28760.html

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