Women in long-term marriages drink slightly more than their single peers.
Why? According to Corinne Reczek, lead author on this not-yet-published study, it’s not because marriage makes women unhappy, which prompts them to drown their sorrows in booze. It’s because men, on average, drink more than women, and once they’re hitched their drinking habits dovetail. The study also shows that when single men marry, they drink less as a result of their wife’s influence. If a couple breaks up, divorced men resume their heavy drinking habits while women cut back to more moderate levels of drinking.
The take-home lesson: Spouses’ habits affect one another for better and for worse—but it’s not as simple as painting women as angels and men as alcoholic oafs. For one, the study authors suggest that drinking in a marriage can help couples bond. What’s more, most long-term married couples drank in moderation—which may not pose a health hazard—while recently and long-term divorced women reported more drinking-related problems than those in long-term marriages. As for why men drink more than women in the first place, Reczek theorizes this happens because men cope with stress by externalizing it, while women tend to internalize and just get depressed.
Read the full study at Psychology Today.