Can True Love Help to Heal a Diseased Heart?

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Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle believed that the heart was the command center of the body and the soul. Not just a mechanical blood pump, but the seat of emotion and intellect. Modern science eventually reassigned those latter functions to the brain. Still, the heart has clung to its reputation as love’s headquarters.

Now, scientists are looking at whether love can actually affect the health of the heart, supporting healing when trouble strikes. Scientists from the University of Ottawa Heart Institute reviewed a dozen randomized controlled trials that evaluated couples-based interventions for heart disease. These trials, published through May of 2025, involved more than 1,400 patient-partner pairs. Instead of focusing solely on the patient, these programs looped in their partners to capture data and make improvements in lifestyle factors such as diet, exercise, medication management, and stress.

Involving intimate partners made a difference: More than three fourths of the studies showed couples’ interventions were more successful than patient-only interventions at getting patients to make healthier choices, such as quitting smoking, sticking with exercise, or taking medications correctly.

Read more: “Can You Die From a Broken Heart?”

But the signal fizzed out when it came to actual cardiac outcomes: Sometimes they improved, and sometimes they didn’t. Mental health effects were mixed, too. Some studies showed reduced depression or anxiety for patients and their partners, but many found no significant differences. And relationship quality didn’t budge in the three trials that measured it. The findings were published in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology.

This gap in the results is part of the point, the scientists argue. Outcomes didn’t improve across the board when couples were recruited to the effort because not all relationships are made equal. Relationship quality makes a difference, and should be the focus of future work, they suggested.

“Considering the well-established literature highlighting that relationship quality impacts heart health, it is surprising that such a limited number of studies have targeted relationship quality in their interventions,” said co-author Heather Tulloch, a psychologist at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute, in a statement. “Sometimes heart disease brings couples closer together, but often it’s a challenge for the relationship and both people in it. We’ve learned over the years that cardiac events do not only happen to the patient, but to the couple.”

For cardiac rehabilitation, they propose a “stepped care” approach—brief relationship education for even the most devoted partners, targeted relationship-enhancement support for couples under strain, and referral to specialized couples therapy when distress runs deeper.

The takeaway is less “love heals the heart” and more “recovery is rarely a solo sport.” Partners can be powerful advocates in the day-to-day choices that keep hearts beating steadily. But if we want the relationship itself to get healthier, it must be treated like part of the patient.

“To improve heart health, we must treat the patient’s heart and nurture the relationship,” said Tulloch.

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Lead image: Anatolir / Shutterstock

• Kristen French

  Posted on December 16, 2025

  Kristen French is an associate editor at Nautilus. She has worked in science journalism since 2013, reporting and writing features and news for publications such as Wired, Backchannel, The Verge, and New York Magazine. She has a masters degree in science journalism from Columbia University.