unmarried men, whereas for women marriage increases the risk of relapse (reviewed in Walitzer and Dearing, 2006). These gender differences regarding the benefits of marriage for individuals attempting to recover from severe AUDs might be interpreted in light of evidence for positive assortative mating for alcohol use and dependence (Grant et al., 2007), with females more likely than males to choose a partner with a history of alcohol dependence (Agrawal et al., 2006). Investigations in more recent data are needed, however, since the rates of alcohol problems among women are increasing (Grucza et al., 2008) and rates of marriage are decreasing (Copen et al., 2012) in younger cohorts. Perhaps reflecting this shift, a recent meta-analysis of treatment studies found that marital status was a less salient predictor of treatment outcome when samples included included larger proportions of women, suggesting that increasing numbers of women entering treatment may shift the findings from previous research based in predominately male samples (Adamson et al., 2009).
