How spousal, friend, and family ties predict health: Within- and between-person effects across 16 years.

Relationships with spouses, family, and friends influence health, yet their effects are often assessed separately. Relationship quality fluctuates over time, and while some couples effectively navigate these ups and downs, others may experience stress and strain. Guided by dyadic stress and support frameworks, we examined how positive and negative spousal, friend, and family ties contribute to subjective health within and across the first 16 years of marriage. We took a within-person approach to examine how ties beyond couples' marriages protect or wear on health, particularly in the years with more marital troubles. Both partners from 373 newlywed couples (199 Black American and 174 White American couples) participated in a longitudinal study and completed questionnaires in Years 1, 3, 7, and 16 of marriage. Dyadic multilevel models showed those with greater spousal responsiveness, lower marital distress, and lower family tension had better subjective health. Husbands' greater family support and lower family tension did not compensate for the negative health effects of low spousal responsiveness, but spousal responsiveness compensated for husbands' less supportive or more tense families. For wives, the combination of both lower spousal responsiveness and family support predicted poorer subjective health, on average, meanwhile wives reported the best health in the years with both more spousal responsiveness and family support. Thus, husbands' spousal ties were more health protective than family ties, whereas wives' health was connected to both spousal and family ties-for better or worse. These findings illustrate gendered health effects in the early to middle years of marriage. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).