Bad marriages can lead to heartbreak, especially if you're a woman: Study

A "broken heart" is something many people experience after a breakup or divorce. New research suggests now that years of being trapped in a bad marriage can literally break your heart.

The study was conducted by a team led by US sociologist Dr Hui Lui, based at Michigan State University.

Dr Lui's team analysed five years of data from around 1,200 married men and women who were aged 57 to 85 at the start of the study.

"Married people seem healthier because marriage may promote health," said lead study investigator Hui Liu, a Michigan State University sociologist. "But it's not that every marriage is better than none. The quality of marriage is really important."

That negative effect on cardiovascular health was even more pronounced for women and older adults, as found in the National Institutes of Health-funded study published this week in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.

Both negative and positive marital qualities were taken into account as "some people really love each other and have a lot of happiness, but at other times they may have a lot of arguments," Liu said.

However, Liu found that negative martial qualities hurt a spouse's heart health more than positive qualities helped.

The risks increase the older you are, according to the study, and the quality of the marriage has more of an effect on women -- possibly because they tend to internalize unhappiness more.

"Marriage counseling is focused largely on younger couples," Liu said on her university's website. "But these results show that marital quality is just as important at older ages, even when the couple has been married 40 or 50 years."