The next time you have a row with your spouse make sure to vent your anger, for a new study has suggested that a fight may be good for a couple's health.

The study, led by Ernest Harburg, professor emeritus with the University of Michigan's School of Public Health and the Psychology Department, stated that couples in which both husband and wife suppress their anger when one attacks the other die earlier than couples where one or both partners express their anger and resolve the conflict.

"Comparison between couples in which both people suppress their anger, and three other types of couples, are very intriguing," Harburg said.

When both spouses suppress their anger at the other when unfairly attacked, earlier death was twice likely than in all other types.

"When couples get together, one of their main jobs is reconciliation about conflict," he said.

"Usually, nobody is trained to do this. If they have good parents, they can imitate, that is fine, but usually the couple is ignorant about the process of resolving conflict. The key matter is, when the conflict happens, how do you resolve it?"

"When you do not, if you bury your anger, and you brood on it and resent the other person or the attacker, and do not try to resolve the problem, then you are in trouble," he observed.

The paper, Marital Pair Anger Coping Types May Act as an Entity to Affect Mortality: Preliminary Findings from a Prospective Study is published in the Journal of Family Communication.