Men: Get A Wife, Live A Better Life

Jack and Charmaine This is wedding anniversary week in our household: We celebrate for 7 days.

Men’s Health magazine reminds us why marriage works. The April issue has six compelling reasons to marry, by Anna Maltby.

Anna is a woman.

But the advice is still good,

If you are susceptible to vice, find a wife. She’ll save you from yourself — and improve your life — in a variety of ways…

1. Increase your pay

A Virginia Commonwealth University study found that married men earn 22 percent more than their similarly experienced but single colleagues.

[VCU is a terrific school located in Richmond, Virginia. Conservative. Good.]

2. Speed up your next promotion

Married men receive higher performance ratings and faster promotions than bachelors, a 2005 study of U.S. Navy officers reported.

[If the Army wanted you to have a wife, it would have issued you one, goes the old joke — it looks like the military is a-changing its perception of the value of a helpmeet.]

3. Keep you out of trouble

According to a recent U.S. Department of Justice report, male victims of violent crime are nearly four times more likely more likely to be single than married.

[Your Business Blogger(R) has not been in a bar fight since getting married. But every few years I got to get the caps replaced on those cracked up front teeth from an altercation back in single days. And I wish that ringing in my ears would stop…]

4. Satisfy you in bed

In 2006, British researchers reviewed the sexual habits of men in 38 countries and found that in every country, married men have more sex.

[…]

5. Help you beat cancer

In a Norwegian study, divorced and never-married male cancer patients had 11 and 16 percent higher mortality rates, respectively, than married men.

[Charmaine is forever pestering me to get a(nother!) physical. Goodness, I had one back in the 90’s. And the colonoscopy was her idea too. Such a pain in the …]

6. Help you live longer

A UCLA study found that people in generally excellent health were 88 percent more likely to die over the 8-year study period if they were single.

The accountability and friendship of marriage works.

Excuse me now, I’ve got some yard work to do.

As one academic studying the men-marriage-maturity transformation wrote, “A rake, now out raking leaves,”