Did you ready about the study showing men get happier as they age?

I want to start with the end of the article, tho.  Dr. Robert J. Waldinger is the co-director of the study at the Department of Psychiatry at Brigham and Women’s Hospital of Harvard’s medical school conducted the study.

They did not interview women for this, and the author (Christine Stapleton, a woman) wrote, “which is why I am reluctant to endorse [this study] of marriage–as-a-predictor-of-healthy-aging...”

So, what did the study, the longest ever longitudinal study of men, find?  Married men get happier as they get older.

Apparently, they followed two groups of men (268 total) for 68 years.  Frankly, that doesn’t seem very likely, but….  In one group, the men graduated from Harvard; the other group from inner-city Boston.

I love this: depression, irritability and anger did not increase with age.  That’s good to hear.  But, I may be taking this out of context.  I think we are suppose to assume we assumed older men get more depressed and cranky.

According to this Cox Newspaper reporter, “Apparently the perception of the elderly as a bunch of wrinkled curmudgeons who mope around the house looking deflated and defeated is wrong.” 

The other finding is that marriage keeps men happy.  This is actually not new.  (The opposite is not necessarily true for women.)  But, they also found lower cholesterol levels of married and single men (50 and 75) were a good indicator for mental and physical aging.

For a good laugh, the author ended the article with, “It didn’t seem that way to me when I was married.”  

I wasn’t aware there was a perception of older men as depressed.  However, based on my clinical experience, I have found men get more emotionally available as they get older.  Women and men tell me they are surprised their father is more openly loving, freer with affection, showing more interest in them and their children.  They have better relationship with their fathers after he retires and becomes a grandfather.