Happy You, Healthy Me? Having a Happy Partner Is Independently Associated With Better Health in Oneself

Objective: Happy people are healthy people. However, past research has largely overlooked the influence of romantic partners' happiness on physical health, particularly how a person's own emotional and physical well-being might also be affected by the happiness and health of their partner. Method: The current study helps fill this gap. In a large nationally representative sample (N = 1,981 couples), a multilevel modeling procedure was employed to explore whether spousal life satisfaction contributes to self-health over and above the contribution of one's own life satisfaction. Results: First, own happiness predicted better self-health and exercise (r values > .07), consistent with previous studies. Importantly, spousal happiness also uniquely predicted better self-health (r values > .06), above and beyond own happiness and critical covariates. Conclusions: This finding significantly broadens extant assumptions about the link between happiness and health, suggesting novel social mechanisms: simply having a happy partner may enhance health as much as striving to being happy oneself. Candidate pathways that could account for this unique boost are discussed.