Drop dead sooner the longer you stay single

Here's news on yet another study that will cause mad panic in those desperately trying to get hitched. It's bad enough that mom is posting profiles of you in dating sites because she can't wait for you to find a suitable mate. Now, it appears, that the longer you stay single, the more likely you are to kick the bucket sooner than those who are married or have been married (divorced, separated, widowed.)

Even more frightening:

For those aged 19 to 44, the main causes of early death among never-married adults were infectious diseases, presumably HIV/AIDS and other external causes. For the older segment, the main causes were cardiovascular and other chronic diseases...According to the authors, the risks of being never married were similar to the risks of having increased blood pressure or high cholesterol. It's not clear if there is a cause-and-effect relationship. "We don't know if it's causal," cautioned, lead researcher Robert Kaplan, professor and chair of the department of health services at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Public Health. It's possible that never-married people suffer from poor health or engage in risky behaviors, either of which could make them less likely to marry, he said."

Oh Geez! Sarcastically: Because you're not married, you are a promiscuous whore who will die of AIDS, an infectious disease. It could be from Ebola or flesh eating disease but because you're single, of course it has to be some dirty, judgmental disease related to sex. And because you are so distraught and frustrated because of your spinsterness, the stress will crank up your blood pressure and most likely lead you straight to a heart attack or could it be that broken heart. And let's not forget, that all the stress from being an uncherished, lascivious tramp will prompt you to binge eating of junk food and sticky sweets to stuff your loneliness thus leading to high cholesterol. If you can't be a man's dream, at least you can become a pharmaceutical company's dream.

And this is the absolute kicker:

"It makes perfect sense," said Dr. Audrey F. Von Poelnitz, a cardiologist at Morristown Memorial Hospital in New Jersey. "If you're married, you have more of a life, you have a whole connection to the world, which creates a happier person who has more desire to be healthy, live healthy and live longer by taking better care of themselves."

Because a study like this comes from a "prestigious" place like UCLA and from "doctors", people are going to believe it as fact. Sounds like judgmental, pro-marriage propaganda to me. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for marriage and having a family. I just hate it when people "scare" others into getting married. Divorce rates are high enough on their own.

Forget about death rates for a second, and let's look at quality of life during those years. I can point out lots of married people who are depressed, disconnected from their lives and themselves, overweight, substance abusers, and just plain miserable. Oh, and just because you are married doesn't mean that you have some force field from getting one of those infectious sexual diseases. Ask anyone who's spouse has cheated on them.

Being single is not a death sentence, and being married doesn't mean life will be better. It's the trap of the elusive magical life.