Studies have shown happy relationships in general, and marriage in particular, can be healthy for you.

Among other things, the study has found stable relationships at midlife are a better predictor of being healthy and happy 30 years later than cholesterol levels.

One theory is that happy relationships calm people down from the fight-or-flight response that kicks in when they’re scared or angry, said Waldinger, a psychiatrist and professor at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

It found the odds of being alive at the end of a study’s given time period was 50 percent higher for those with the strongest social relationships compared with people without such ties.

In one of his earlier studies, for example, he found angry arguments did not presage a failed marriage, so long as affection was underlying the relationship.