ANN ARBOR—When two hearts beat as one long after the pacemakers are in, the marriage relationship is bound to be different from a honeymooner’s. But in the precise way that longevity affects a marriage, a University of Michigan study suggests, east is east and west is west. Most of the long-married U.S. couples studied by U-M researchers started out believing in romance and togetherness. By their golden anniversaries, what they wanted most was independence. Japanese couples took the opposite tack. Many had arranged marriages, starting out as virtual strangers and developing warmth and closeness over the years.

The Michigan study, published in the current (August 1996) issue of the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, was conducted by U-M researchers Berit Ingersoll-Dayton and Ruth Campbell with colleagues from Tokyo University Hospital. For the study, the researchers interviewed 24 long-married couples from the two nations, where life expectancy is the highest in the world. “Today in the United States, 54 percent of people over the age of 65 live as couples, compared to about 30 percent 10 years ago,” says Campbell, a faculty associate at the U-M Institute of Gerontology and associate director of social work and community programs at the U-M Turner Geriatric Services. Campbell and colleagues started out each interview asking how the couple met and decided to marry, then ended up asking what each couple saw for their relationship in the future.

“The American couples wanted more space and distance from each other after retirement,” Campbell reports, “whereas the Japanese couples were involved in becoming closer.” The Japanese couples had been married between 30 and 52 years, while the American couples had been wed between 28 and 67 years. “I have very consciously tried to have each of us have things that are ours,” said one American wife who retired, reluctantly, after her husband did. Another American wife spoke of moving to a larger, rather than a smaller, home after her husband retired, just so both could be home at the same time without bumping into each other. Other wives mentioned how important it was to keep two cars after retirement, or to pursue different hobbies and interests. Campbell cautions against seeing the findings as an indictment of long-term marriage in the United States. On the contrary, she emphasizes that seeking intimacy with your spouse and seeking distance are not necessarily mutually exclusive. “These couples viewed their time apart as a way of enhancing their time together,” she says.

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