Making health a team effort: How couples can support each other's wellness journey

Spouses and partners can have powerful influences on one another’s health both directly and indirectly — including behaviors around physical activity, diet, sleep and more. For instance, if your partner exercises regularly, that might lead you to be more active too.

Directly, that influence can take the form of encouraging a partner to make a doctor’s appointment when needed or reminding them to take their medications or get a flu shot. Indirectly, partners can serve as models by eating healthier and getting enough sleep. 

"The flip side of that, though, is that partners can also potentially influence behaviors for the worse," said Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a professor of psychology and neuroscience and director of the Social Connection and Health Lab at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. "For instance, if your partner is a smoker, you're more likely to be a smoker, and if your partner really doesn't want to go exercise, it's going to make it harder for you to go out and exercise." Same if you're trying to eat healthier but your partner is not into quinoa, salmon or whatever else sounds good to you.

Making a commitment to being healthier together isn't as simple as telling your partner that it's time to change their ways, said Dr. Courtney Polenick, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor, who has studied caregiving and what influences the health of aging couples. If the decision to do something healthier is not made in tandem, it can come received as nagging.

Overall, being in sync on making healthy changes can be "a little challenging," Polenick said. But she and Holt-Lunstad offered ideas on how to go about it.

1. Start small

Start with baby steps and grow from there. Say you resolve to take a walk together every evening. Aim for a few nights a week at first instead of every night, Polenick said, to make sure that works for both partners before adding more.

You don't have to change everything at once, she said. If your goals are to exercise and eat better, maybe agree to focus on those evening walks until they're a habit. Once that has become a habit, you can agree to try to work on preparing healthier meals.

2. The right attitude

The key to making healthy changes together is to look for ways to provide each other support.

"You definitely would want to start it more in terms of something positive that you can do together, not like, 'Hey, I think you're lazy, so we should do more physical activity,'" Polenick said.

If exercise is your goal, for example, she suggested approaching resolutions with an attitude of, "Hey, we could both be a little healthier. What are ways that we can incorporate more physical activity into our routine and help one another to be more active?"

The American Heart Association recommends adults get at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity physical activity each week, or some of both. Adults also should do muscle-strengthening exercises at least two days a week.

3. Be supportive

The idea of being supportive of one another’s needs is important if one partner makes a healthy resolution that the other can't share, such as a nonsmoker who wants to help a partner quit smoking. (Almost a third of deaths from coronary heart disease are due to smoking and secondhand smoke, according to the AHA.)

In such a case, Polenick said to ask your partner, "How could I support you?" That support could be the form of helping your spouse find healthy forms of stress relief, such as exercising together, doing a hobby that you both enjoy or spending time with friends.

4. Work together

A shared commitment to, say, get enough sleep each night would certainly be healthy, Holt-Lunstad said. Sleep is essential for heart health, and most adults need seven to nine hours, according to the AHA. But insisting that everyone go to bed at the same time could be a challenge if one person is a night owl and the other a morning person.

"But if you can come up with shared goals, and you're doing it together, it increases the likelihood of success because you've got each other to keep each other accountable," Holt-Lunstad said.

With the example of better sleep, Polenick mentioned some approaches that support good habits, even without being on the same schedule. Couples might resolve to avoid caffeine or alcohol in the evening or limit screen time before bed.

5. Ease stress

If you're looking for something to help one another relax, remember that not everybody will approach problems the same way. Researchers call this sort of awareness "partner responsiveness," Holt-Lunstad said. "It's about being responsive to your partner's needs" and realizing that might look different from your own needs.

"In some cases, your partner just wants you to listen and validate and maybe not solve their problem," she said. Other times, they really do want help figuring out a solution. Finding the best way to be supportive requires listening to your partner to understand how to help.

So, in the context of a nurturing relationship, it's OK if one person finds relaxation in joining a book club and the other is more interested in golf, she said.

6. Spend time together

Another way couples influence one another's health, Holt-Lunstad said, is by giving each other meaning.

That could mean finding ways to spend time doing enjoyable things together, Holt-Lunstad said. "So if you want to read more books, well, then maybe it's like, 'Hey, what about reading books together?'" It could mean learning a new skill together. "Or you could just think, 'Let's make sure we have a date night once a week' or 'We'll always have dinner together.'"

7. Get socially active

"Research does suggest that having a variety of types of relationships is important for health and well-being," Holt-Lunstad said. So agreeing to nurture such social connections could be a healthy joint goal.

That could take the form of resolving to go out to dinner once a month with another couple or committing to having a group of friends over once a month, Holt-Lunstad said. Polenick suggested it also could take the form of stepping out to take a class together – cooking, painting, pottery or some other creative activity.

8. Self-care can count

Caregiving is another way partners end up supporting one another's health. It's a labor of love, Holt-Lunstad said. But caregivers can be so focused on caregiving that they neglect their own needs.

Resolutions that help you take care of your own health aren't selfish, she said. It's a form of saying, "I want to be around for my partner and be able to be healthy, so I'm going to take better care of myself."