God’s Way Is Best – Marriage Found to Have Huge Benefits When It Comes to Cancer, Heart Health, Mental Health

A principle I learned from legendary Christian author C.S. Lewis would seem to have special applicability here.

Namely, the sacrifice of a lesser to a greater good will often result in the realization of both good aims. But the sacrifice of a greater to a lesser good often means that we will achieve neither.

Earlier this month, The Washington Post reported what we all know: marriage provides health benefits to both partners.

Shannon Markus, an emergency physician at Dell Seton Medical Center at the University of Texas, summarized.

“Married people do tend to live longer and spend more years healthy on average,” Markus said.

To no one’s surprise, a good marriage has a positive effect on mental health, as Mitchell Hale, a therapist at Sawtelle Psychotherapy Group in Los Angeles, explained.

“These dynamics allow for the cultivation of joy, intimacy, laughter and other positive emotions and experiences in our daily lives,” Hale said of marriages that feature stability, companionship, and other essential kinds of support.

More surprisingly, perhaps, marriage reduces one’s risks of both cardiovascular disease and cancer.

Kim Smolderen, a professor of medicine and psychiatry and co-director of the Vascular Medicine Outcomes program at the Yale School of Medicine, attributed the heart-related benefit to the “social support” marriage provides, which, she said “may buffer health-related risks and outcomes, including cardiovascular disease.”

Moreover, Paulo Pinheiro, a professor of cancer epidemiology at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami, authored a 2026 study showing that men and women who never married stood a greater chance of developing cancer than men and women who had once married or who remained married.

“One way to think about it is that marriage may provide an informal ‘health manager’ — a partner who can help moderate behaviors such as smoking or alcohol use, encourage healthier habits and prompt engagement with preventive care and screening,” Pinheiro said.

Of course, all of these benefits depend on having good marriages.

“Dissatisfaction and poor marriage quality have been shown to increase the risk of high blood pressure, heart attacks and even cardiovascular mortality,” Smolderen said of the risks that unhappy partners, particularly women, often face.

In short, health professionals agree that marriage provides health benefits.

Rather than resting on “social support” as an explanation, however, let us examine the probable reason behind that connection.

Using Lewis’ formulation, enjoying mental and heart health while staying free of cancer certainly qualifies as a good.

But sacrificing oneself and one’s own interests for someone else’s sake — in this case by joining in a spiritual union, becoming “one flesh,” and promising to forever prioritize the well-being of one’s beloved spouse — qualifies as an even higher good.

Thus, it turns out that when we pursue the higher good of marriage, God grants us the lesser good, too.

Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.