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MARRIAGES AND AGING
In the early 1980s University of California anthropologist Colleen Johnson interviewed elderly couples after either the husband or the wife had been discharged from a Bay Area hospital. She probed the feelings of both spouses separately, asking these middle- and working-class older people about the quality of their marriages, the amount of conflict they had, how emotionally fulfilling the relationship was. Only one-quarter said they had any major disagreements, - most felt they could firmly rely on their husbands or wives for emotional support. These people were obviously taking seriously their vows of in sickness or in health.
The only chink Johnson found was the unemotional, stoic way husbands and wives described their marriages: \"We\'ve survived fifty-five years of it. Today they only last two or three years.\" \"He\'s been a good provider and a good father.\" \"Long ago I realized you can\'t change horses in midstream.\" True, these couples were content; but passion was just as obviously gone.
Johnson feels that in later life good marriages should be judged by different criteria. As the years pass we may be cemented not so much by the intensity of our emotions as by the length of our history - our backlog of shared ups and downs. \"The fact of a marriage\'s mere survival connotes success.\"
These studies show that marital happiness is alive and well among elderly couples. But if I had described others, a much less upbeat portrait would emerge. Distance, disappointment, and isolation blight many long-lasting marriages too, especially among the very old. So, while knowing that older couples can be happy - and often are - is encouraging, the obvious truth is that marriages differ greatly, in old age and at any other age.
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GENERAL HEALTH
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