Affairs of the heart

Living alone can be so soothing. You don't fight for the TV remote and can watch your favourite sports channel or soap whenever you choose.

Living alone can be so soothing. You don’t fight for the TV remote and can watch your favourite sports channel or soap — depending mainly on your gender — whenever you choose. You don’t fight about the toilet seat being up or down. You don’t grumble about your spouse/partner driving too fast or too slow — again, usually dependent on the gender. And you don’t grit your teeth when your husband/boyfriend yells while frantically hunting for his car keys each day.

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But this stressed-out life is apparently what is called being ‘happily’ married. Happily, doctors at the Danish Aarhus Sygehus University Hospital say, living with someone keeps the heart in better working order than if one were living alone. The silent corollary: it gives one a long, long, long life to enjoy all of the above.

With solo living on the rise in most big cities in the world, many people will have to make a choice of what they consider a better life. Will they prefer to pump up the volume, order their favourite pizzas and boogie the night away — for life is short? Or, will they opt to live life quietly, the silence only broken by the nagging spouse snatching the cigarette from their mouths — and watch their wrinkles grow deeper together? But one thing is guaranteed: one way or the other, your heart is bound to break.