By Cathy Severson

As baby boomers look for the secrets to longevity, many myths have surfaced. The good news there is some ‘hard’ evidence about what creates a longer life span. Many people believe that marriage is the ticket to living longer.

The longevity project was started in 1921 to follow the lives of 1500 individuals to find out the secrets to longevity. Marriage has long been considered one of the ingredients to longer life expectancy. But, is it?

The researchers determined that marriage affects men more than women. This means that married men live longer than men who aren’t married. As the researchers dug deeper, they discovered even more important information.

The research determined that steadily married men were likely to live to age 70 and beyond, but less that a third of divorced men lived to old age. Divorce hurts men directly, but also seems to initiate unhealthy behaviors.

Women had a different experience. Married women lived a bit longer than divorced women who remarried. But, women who divorced and never remarried lived the longest of all three groups.

It appears the myth of women looking for marriage and men shunning it has absolutely nothing to do with predicting how long people will live.

Never married women tend to be healthier and live longer than married women. This is the opposite of single never married men, who tend to live unhealthier lives.

For those of us who grow up with the notion of women being the most happy when married, it may be true. But, the people who live the longest are single women. For men, one of the major secrets to longevity is being and staying married to that old ball and chain.

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