Sharing a bottle of wine with your partner on date night can be romantic, and it turns out, it could also be good for your longevity. A new study finds couples who drink together live longer than couples where one partner drinks and the other doesn’t, or neither partner drinks.
A team of researchers from the University of Michigan wanted to test a theory called “the drinking partnership,” where couples who have similar alcohol use habits tend to have less conflict and longer marriages.
- The researchers analyzed data on more than 45-hundred couples who are married or live together and were interviewed every two years over the span of two decades.
- The team set out to find out what kind of impact drinking has on health, rather than the success of the marriage.
- They were surprised to find that couples where both partners drank alcohol sometimes in the last three months lived longer than couples that didn’t drink or one drank and the other didn’t.
- Light drinking led to better survival rates than abstaining from alcohol or heavy drinking.
- Researchers note that when people have similar drinking habits, it may be a sign of compatibility in their lifestyles, intimacy and relationship satisfaction.
But this isn’t a sign to go out and start hitting the bottle with your boo in an effort to increase your lifespan. Study author Kira Birditt points out, “Behaviors that are good for marriage are not necessarily good for health.”
Source: Talker