尽管婚姻本身可能带来诸多压力，但它能让人们较为轻松应对生活中的其他压力。美国研究人员发现，婚姻和稳定的恋爱关系能够影响人们应对压力时的激素水平，提高抗压能力。

    Being married or in a long-term relationship improves one’s ability to deal with stress, according to a new study published in the journal Stress. Researchers found that when people in a couple are under pressure they produce fewer stress-related hormones. 

    Scientists found that students given tests they believed would affect their career prospects had much less of the stress hormone cortisol flowing through their bodies if they had a partner. 

    Cortisol is released when the body is stressed and is part of the “fight or flight” reaction to danger. The chemical is seen as a measure of how stressed someone feels. 

    “What we found is that marriage has a dampening effect on cortisol responses to psychological stress -- and that is very new,” said lead researcher Dario Maestripieri of Chicago University. 

    The finding may go some way towards explaining previous studies that have shown married people live longer and have fewer health problems. 

    “These results suggest single and unpaired individuals are more responsive to psychological stress than married individuals, a finding consistent with a growing body of evidence showing that marriage and social support can buffer against stress,” said Mr. Maestripieri.