Toxic relationships

[waltky]

Spouses make each other behave badly, study says...

Marriage's 'dark side': Spouses catch each other's bad behavior
8/23/2011 : Couples in long-term committed relationships can wreck each other's health

As any single person with married friends can testify, their constant patter about how great marriage is for just about everything (Your heart! Your mood! Your life expectancy !) can be a little annoying. Research supports those pitying glances they shoot in your direction when you defend your singleness; long-term committed relationships like marriage really are good for your health. But, still. That's all the more reason to embrace University of Cincinnati sociologist Corinne Reczek, who believes that research “has failed to look at the dark side” of coupledom.

In research presented this week at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in Las Vegas, Reczek provides a little balance. Reczek interviewed 122 heterosexual, lesbian, and gay couples with an average age of older than 40 and an average relationship duration of between 14 and 25 years. Then she teased out subtle and direct clues as to how the couple interacted in health-related behaviors. What did she find? Three ways that partners can erode each other’s health habits: “influence,” “synchronicity” and “personal responsibility.”

The examples of each will sound familiar to any long-married person. “Yeah, I drink a Dr. Pepper every morning,” Jason, a man in the study, is quoted as saying. “It’s like a ritual.” Maria, who never drank sodas before marrying Jason, now indulges. She has also picked up his junk food habit. “I can definitely bring her health down, if she ever let herself get on the bandwagon, so to speak,” he told Reczek. Jason is influencing his wife to drink soda and eat junk food and he’s dismissing any responsibility he may have for not changing his own habits by using the words “if she ever let herself,” an argument that his wife has personal responsibility for her own health. It’s not his job.

It's the guy's fault

See also:

Toxic friends? 8 in 10 people endure poisonous pals
8/22/2011 : Self-absorbed sidekicks and emotional vampires top list of unhealthy company we keep, survey shows

They belittle and backbite and drive us batty with their soul-sucking behavior. Who are these hideous people? Our ... um ... friends, according to a joint survey conducted by TODAY.com and SELF magazine. We asked our readers to come clean about these prickly — and at times, poisonous — relationships and got an earful from 18,000 women and 4,000 men.

In fact, 84 percent of women — and 75 percent of men — said they'd had a toxic friend at some point, with 1 in 3 survey takers fessing up to a toxic BFF. Just how bad are our so-called friends? Sixty-five percent of you have been stuck with a self-absorbed sidekick (easily recognized by their fondness for the words "I, me, mine") while 59 percent have been buds with one of those draining emotional vampire types.

"I recommended a woman I knew for a job and she'd come in and you'd say hello and she'd sigh and grunt and tell you she had a headache or a back ache," says Lucia Patritto, a 53-year-old educator from Ironwood, Mich. "We're a positive bunch at work, but she was like this emotional wet blanket. She wasn't just a pill; she was a suppository. You could practically hear the Debbie Downer music."

Overly critical chums were next on the toxic friend hit list, with 55 percent of people having to suffer through their self-righteous stinkeyes or critical tirades. Friends who undermined with insults or backhanded compliments came in at No. 4, with 45 percent admitting they were buds with a backstabber.

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[uscitizen]

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[super_dror]

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