positive life-styles with fewer health-deteriorating behaviors [31,32]. Theoretical reasoning of sex differences in the potential protective effects of marriage is complex, but marriage appears to provide more social control for men, with empirical evidence demonstrating that women engage in greater monitoring of their partners’ health-promoting behaviors than do men [33]. Finally, twin studies have found that the heritability of alcohol consumption is decreased among individuals in committed relationships [34,35], suggesting that being with a partner may act as a ‘social control’ that limits expression of genetic predispositions toward alcohol problems.
