Marriage and Dementia

I forgot my point.

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.

At least that's how I see it. Now it's time for you brilliant paying subscribers to express your views on this issue via the following scientific poll, and in the comments.