Marriage and Dementia
I
forgot my point.
Apr 21, 2025
Before you read this article, please take the following
brief quiz:
1. Are you married?
HOW TO SCORE:
If you answered "No," you do not need to read
this article. If you answered "Yes," or if you don't remember taking
a quiz, I have some disturbing news for you.
I refer to a study by researchers at Florida State
University, who studied the relationship between marriage and dementia. Their
study produced a surprising finding, which is summarized by this headline from the Independent:
Twist as marriage now linked to an increased risk of
dementia
That's right: According to this study, if you're
married, you're more likely to develop dementia than if you're single.
As the Independent article states: "This study challenges the idea that
marriage is automatically good for brain health."
Does this mean that if we're married and we don't want to
become demented, we should immediately get a divorce? Yes.
NO! I mean, no. Of course not. It means that we should try
to understand what it is about marriage that might cause a person's mental
capacity to decline.
I personally have been married for over 600 years, so I
feel qualified to weigh in on this. My theory is that after you've been married
for a while, you outsource certain tasks from your brain to your spouse's
brain, and the part of your brain that used to perform those tasks develops
what brain scientists refer to as "brain rust."
For example, let's say Michelle and I want to watch a
certain TV show that we've heard is good. First we have to figure out where it
is. In the olden days, of course, we'd know exactly where it was: It was on
television. But now it could be virtually anywhere — Netflix, Hulu, Apple,
Tubi, Fubo, Max, Peacock, Feeboo, Skeeter, Emu, Fafo, Bazooty, Skeeter Prime or
any of the dozens of other streaming services that we may or may not be paying
for — there is no way to tell — and almost certainly do not remember the login
name or password for.
Once we've figured out where the show is — this can take
several days — I go to The Basket. This is a basket on our coffee table that,
from the outside, appears rustic and harmless.
But lurking inside The Basket is our scarily large
collection of remote controls, some of them dating back to the Spanish-American
War.
It's my job to determine which remote controls we need — it
can take more than one — and manipulate them in such a way that we are able to
watch the show. Michelle never does this. At this point I don't think she could do
it. A couple of times I've tried to explain my procedure to her. ("OK, you
see this button here? Do NOT press it.") But it's hopeless. The part of
her brain that in an unmarried human would handle remote controls is rusted
solid from lack of use.
Another aspect of our lives that I'm responsible for is
plumbing. When one of our toilets goes awry, it is my job, and mine alone, to
point out that "Toilets Gone Awry" would be a good name for a rock
band. But it's also my job to repair the toilet. And by "repair the
toilet," I of course mean "call the plumber."
Michelle almost never talks to the plumber. The plumbing
sector of her brain is now a nonfunctional rust glob. Whereas I talk to the
plumber a lot, especially lately, because we're installing a new septic system.
This is something that, like many couples, we've always dreamed of doing, and
we finally decided, what the heck, we're not going to live forever, let's just
DO it. As the plumbing specialist in our marriage, I am deeply involved in this
project, not in the sense of doing any of the actual work, but in the sense of
taking pride in our new septic tank, which is larger than many New York City
apartments.
So in two crucial areas of our married life — plumbing and
remote controls — my brain handles the thinking for both of us. I also am in
charge of some other areas, including:
— Turning off every single light in the house at least six
times a day.
-- Opening any mail we receive from financial institutions
and, after frowning thoughtfully at the contents for 8 to 10 seconds, putting
them in a "file."
-- Spiders.
-- Making sure we arrive at the airport at least four hours
before the scheduled departure time of our flight because You Never Know.
But there are other areas that my brain does not concern
itself with, because I have come to rely on Michelle to think about them. One
example is pillows. I never have to think about pillows, because Michelle
apparently thinks about them 24/7, the result being that we have acquired
enough pillows to blockade the Canadian border. Michelle is also extremely good
at detecting odors, so I don't have to. Here's a conversation we have often:
MICHELLE: Do you smell that?
ME: Smell what?
MICHELLE: You can't smell that?
But Michelle's biggest mental responsibility is thinking
for both of us about other people. I used to be involved with other people, but
over time I outsourced pretty much all social interactions to Michelle, to the
point where my only regular human contact, aside from Michelle, is the plumber.
As a result, the social part of my brain now has the same level of neural
activity as a rutabaga. This means that whenever we encounter another person, I
depend on Michelle to supply me with critical information such as:
-- Who is this person?
-- Do I know this person?
-- Am I related to this person?
-- Do I have to talk to this person?
-- If so, what should I say?
Because I never know who anybody is, I try to avoid people
altogether. If Michelle and I are walking in our neighborhood, and we see
somebody approaching, my immediate instinct is to hide behind something — a
mailbox if necessary — whereas hers is to engage the person in conversation. As
they converse, it quickly becomes obvious to me that we know this person, by
which I mean that Michelle knows this person and I should know
this person. But I can't just say to Michelle, in front of the person,
"Who IS this person?"
So what happens is, Michelle and the person start chatting,
while I remain mute, smiling brightly in an effort to appear delighted to be
part of this social interaction. After about a minute I start casually sidling
away so as to indicate to Michelle that we need to move along. Michelle is a
talker, so sometimes I will sidle a full 30 feet — enough for a first down —
before she notices that I'm gone. Then she'll say goodbye to the person, catch
up with me and reveal the person's name, which will go into my ears but
immediately bounce off my brain without penetrating.
Anyway, if my theory is correct, it explains the results of
the Florida State University study. Essentially, married couples have just one
fully functioning brain between them. If you test married people's brains
individually, you're going to see a mental dropoff, because of the outsourcing.
I suspect another contributing factor is children, which
many married people have. Children take a serious toll on the adult human
brain. Every time you start to read "The Cat in the Hat Comes Back,"
two million of your brain cells elect to commit suicide rather than go
through that again.
So to summarize what we know:
1. The institution of marriage is vital for the survival of
human society.
2. But marriage makes us stupid.
3. Therefore, some kind of helpful conclusion should go
here.
