Does love help you live longer? What a great question! Statistics show that happily married couples live as much as five years longer than their single counterparts (with the effect being somewhat more pronounced in married men). Because it is so subjective, it is impossible to accurately measure love with statistics. However, with a cursory glance of the data, it seems reasonably safe to assume that love, does, in some way, lead people to spend a few more years among the living.
Everybody agrees that being loved is a wonderful feeling. Knowing that somebody cares for us is hard to explain in words, but it sure feels good! Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if you smiled a little bit just now thinking about the people that love you. And though true love towards someone doesn't require that they love you back, I bet you just so happen to return love to those who love you most.
Loving others means you are unselfish when dealing with them. Caring for someone else's happiness and well-being takes your focus off of you and puts other people first. This can be a marvellous way to reduce stress that would otherwise steal years from our lives.
Another quick answer to the question "does love help you live longer" is, "hate sure makes you die sooner". Hating others only increases other negative feelings and stress. Have you ever felt a certain something pumping through your body when you hate someone or something? Your whole physiology changes, besides, its wasted energy, because those that are the subject of our hatred either don't care how we feel, or have no idea how we feel.
One more aspect of love and longevity is that love often gives us a reason to keep on living. Men and women throughout the world have survived horrendous situations (man-made and natural) only because they focused on seeing their loved ones once again. If that's not a testament to the life-extending power of love, I don't know what is!
The connection between emotional health and physical health is still not completely understood. However, there are clear links between the two. The human body is, in many ways, greater than the sum of its parts. Another way to look at it is if we are in prime physical shape, but are emotional wrecks, then we are not getting all life has to offer.
Let's be realistic for a moment, shall we? Love may not keep you from getting hit by a bus when crossing the street, but it can make recovering from such an accident more bearable. Even if love can't be proven to help you live longer, I know I would rather have a few short years of loving someone, instead of having several lifetimes without any love at all.
There are two easy ways to use love to increase the quality of life. The first is to show love towards others. That not only includes family and friends, but everyone you deal with in some capacity. The second way can be a bit trickier for some: allow others to love you. Keep the following phrase in mind as you go about your day, and see what a difference it makes. The phrase…? "Let love happen".
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