Husbands stress women more than kids
According to a research conducted by Today, 75 per cent of 7000 American mothers confessed that they did almost all duties in the family.
Apart from, washing, cleaning the house or preparing the meals they also were responsible for most tasks related to children. Women managed to cope with these duties but at a very high price. They felt stressed and nervous because they lacked enough time in the day for all the things. The main reason for this was they didn’t get help from their partner or at least that was what 1 out of 5 mothers claimed. Finally, forty-six per cent /nearly a half/ of the participants stated that their husbands made them feel more stressed than their kids did!
Stress is not reserved only for women
However, not only women are affected by stress. It is scientifically calculated that per year around 315 out of 100,000 deaths could be caused by problems and worries in the marriage. Men whose female partners were nagging were twice as likely to die within ten years, for example. The researchers explained this with the fact that when under stress men produced higher levels of the hormone cortisol which is known to cause poor health.
What’s the long-term effect of stress
It’s a little surprise then that according to researchers from the University of Padova, stress, including this within marriage, plays a role in life and health in the longer perspective. Interestingly, it turned out that later in life, the health of a husband could become progressively worse if he lost his wife. On the contrary, if a husband passed away wife’s health tended to improve and the levels of stress and nervousness diminished. The researchers suggested the reason was that men relied to a larger extent on their wives than the other way round. However, this conclusion is more or less a speculation rather than a scientifically proved fact.
It’s important to share responsibilities
Healthy Holistic Living prepared an article with several techniques to help partners in a couple become closer to one another. If both have full-time jobs, they should prepare a list of duties and decide who does what. This way they reduced stress in the relationship and carried out much more things. On one hand, women could do house chores or deal with the raising of children. On the other hand, fathers could organize doctor or dentist appointments and pick-up or drop off the kids. With the internet and smartphones, it becomes easier for people to keep in touch with each other, so partners could use a shared calendar or something to keep up-to-date.
Things that relieve stress
Another good option to relieve the stress in the couple, suggested by Judy Ford, a licensed clinical social worker and author of Every Day Love: The Delicate Art of Caring for Each Other is that each partner prepares a list of their “comforting rituals.” This could include activities such as taking bath to working in the garage or reading a book, she explained.
As a final point, it’s necessary to remember that whether it’s women or men who suffer from it, stress makes a couple’s life bad. It causes dissatisfaction and disconnection and people should try to avoid it. Balancing the responsibilities and support the partner could be very effective to make both feel comfortable in the relationship.
