Strong and happy relationships are good for your health and wellbeing. For example, we know that married men live longer. Being married also helps to avoid death from cancer, we have recently learned.

But can a relationship hurt your health? Yes, it can, scientists insist. According to the latest research, bad relationships are linked to poor health.

Why bad relationships affect your health

Over the past few decades, young adults tend to postpone marriage. They prefer casual style connections and break up easily if a partner does not fit their requirements.

A team of researchers from the University at Buffalo, New York, USA, insists that this may be a good thing: Poor quality of relationships affects a person’s health.

One of the researchers, Ashley Barr, believes that staying in a low-quality relationship impacts personal well-being. The longer you wait to walk away from such a liaison, the more it harms your health, Science Daily reports.

To check this theory, scientists questioned youngsters from Iowa. All the participants were raised in two-parent families.

The young people answered questions concerning their satisfaction with a partner, hostility in a relationship, the level of support, kindness, love, and affection. The researchers were also interested in how people behaved outside of their relationship — if their actions were anti-social or not.

Over the two-year period, one-third of the participants identified changes in their relationships.

At the end of the research, the scientists have concluded that continuous and happy relationships contribute a lot to the individual’s physical and mental well-being. Bad relationships have the propensity to cause problems with health. The researchers also say that living alone is healthier than staying in troubled relations.

Scientists say that toxic relationships affect your health. It’s better to be alone than to stay in a bad liaison.

By the way, researchers from Denmark came to similar results while investigating how a relationship influences life expectancy. They also found that bad relationships are harmful. Their findings were linked to cortisol, the stress hormone. Cortisol is released in excess when people are in stressful situations. Elevated cortisol levels increase the risk of problems with immune system, may provoke heart diseases, mental illness and the list goes on.

Men’s organism produces even higher amounts of this hormone, so stressful affairs (no matter with whom, even with neighbors) have a bigger impact on their health. The study analysed participants over 11 years. Some people died during this time and the most frequent reasons were oncology and heart problems. Those who have expressed concerns about their relationships and said they couldn’t cope with the excessive demands placed on them were twice as likely to die.

Toxic relationships are unhealthy and lead to manifestations of various illnesses. Being alone is way better than to stay in a toxic situation with your partner. In the meantime, a little bit of time by yourself is healthy when you are seeking someone to love.

Read also:

• The Impact of Marriage on Men and Women’s Health
• Boost Your Job Satisfaction with a Healthy Sex Life
• Rich Live Longer
• The Reason Why Women Live Longer Than Men