“Relationships make us healthy and happy”

What makes us healthy and happy throughout our lives? What should be invested in so that these “investments” will more than pay off in the future? Not so long ago, researchers conducted a survey, finding out the main life goals of the millenials – those who were born in the period from the early 1980s to the late 2000s. And over 80% of those surveyed said that their main goal is to become rich. And half of the participants named the desire to become famous as another goal.

Modern society encourages us to work ever harder to achieve ever greater results. And it is easy to think that this is the key to happiness and well-being in life. But this is far from the complete picture.

75 year experiment

Much of what we know about life is based on memories of our past. But looking back is never 100% objective. We forget a lot of what happened to us, and the surviving memories are sometimes distorted beyond recognition. But there is something free from these distortions: The Harvard Study of Adult Development is the longest study of human adulthood in history.¹. I am its fourth head.

For more than 75 years, we have been watching the lives of 724 people. From year to year, scientists asked them the same questions, having no idea how the life of the participants in the experiment would turn out. Almost no such project lasts more than 10 years – either most of the participants lose interest in it, or most scientists find more relevant topics, or funding stops. And the fact that we have been able to continue our project for three quarters of a century is a unique event.

This happened by a happy coincidence of many circumstances and thanks to the amazing perseverance of several generations of scientists. About 60 of the original 724 participants in the experiment are still alive and still participating in the project, although most of them are already over 90.

Since 1938 we have been studying the lives of two groups of men. The first at the start was represented by junior students at Harvard University. The second was made up of boys from the poorest areas of Boston. They were chosen precisely because they belong to the most disadvantaged social strata.

At the beginning of the study, they all underwent interviews and medical examinations, my colleagues spoke with the parents of each of the participants. And then they all grew up. They became factory workers and masons, lawyers and doctors, and one even became the President of the United States. Some developed schizophrenia, some became alcoholics. Some have made their way from the very bottom to the very top of the social ladder, others have gone in the opposite direction. And even in their wildest dreams, the founders of this project could not imagine that I would tell you about its results more than 75 years later. But it is so.

Every two years, my colleagues again and again seek out study participants, call them, and patiently ask them to answer detailed life questionnaires. It’s funny, by the way, that many of the former boys from the poorer neighborhoods of Boston are surprised: “Why do you need this, what is so special about my life?” Harvard graduates don’t ask these questions.

The study is not limited to questionnaires. We get medical records from our participants’ doctors, we take blood samples from them, we do brain scans. We record detailed conversations with their wives and children. And what have we learned from the tens of thousands of pages of information accumulated over the years of research?

The main lesson, imagine, has nothing to do with wealth, fame, or hard, hard work. 75 years of study allow us to say quite definitely: good relationships make us healthy and happy in the first place. And if we summarize our study in one phrase, then that’s it, then we can put an end to it.

Three main lessons

But in more detail, we learned three important things about relationships. First: social interactions, relationships with other people are really useful and necessary. And their absence, loneliness, really kills. People with strong, multiple social ties—with loved ones, friends, neighbors—feel happier, are physically healthier, and live longer. Loneliness is poisonous. And people who are more isolated from others than they would like to be are less happy. Their health leaves much to be desired, and many brain functions weaken and are lost much earlier. As a result, their life is shorter.

The saddest thing is that one in five Americans today complains about loneliness. And we know perfectly well that you can be lonely both surrounded by many people and in your own family. Hence the second important conclusion. It’s not about the number of friends and not the presence of a permanent partner. The most important thing is the quality of relationships with loved ones. As it turns out, living in a state of conflict literally harms our health. And families in which there are many quarrels and little warmth and care may affect us even more detrimentally than divorces.

When all of our participants had already passed over 80, we decided to try to go back to the middle of their lives. And see: was it possible to predict how everyone’s life would turn out? Who will be healthy and happy at 80, and who will not? We collected all available information about these people at the age of 50. And the people who were most satisfied with their relationships at 50 were the healthiest and most successful at 80.

And finally, the third lesson we learned is that good relationships protect not only our body, but also our brain. Strong, secure attachment stimulates its functions. For example, people who are satisfied with their relationships tend to have excellent memories for longer.

This does not mean at all that relationships should be exclusively cloudless. Many of the couples in our study, even after the age of 80, are able to quarrel violently and sort things out for days on end. This is not the point, but the fact that even in the midst of a squabble, they know very well and feel that they are able to rely on their partner at a time when it will be really bad and hard. Such quarrels have no effect on memory and other brain functions.

So, the conclusion is as old as the world. Good relationships enhance our health and sense of well-being. Why is it so difficult for us to follow this simple truth and so easy to neglect it? Probably because we are human. We are prone to momentary decisions, we want to achieve something as soon as possible, get something that will make our life – as it seems to us – become beautiful and will remain so forever. And relationships are difficult, long and confusing. You need to constantly put your soul into them, there are no guarantees, no brilliance and other attributes of success. And there is no end – it is the work of a lifetime.

Like the millenials, our project participants, entering adulthood, believed that wealth, fame and great achievements were exactly what was needed for a happy life. But over the course of 75 years, our research has confirmed again and again: those who relied on family, on relationships with friends, colleagues, like-minded people turned out to be happy and prosperous.

What does it mean to bet on relationships, to invest in them? The possibilities are almost endless. You can simply look up from your computer or smartphone screen to chat live with those you love. You can revive a relationship that has lost its novelty by some kind of joint undertaking. A long walk or a sudden romantic date, for example. You can call a relative with whom you have not communicated for a hundred years. Life is too short to waste it on insults and squabbles. A happy, long life can only be built on love. Only on good terms.

The full version of Robert Waldinger’s lecture is available at Online TED project.

¹ For more information about the project, visit the Harvard Medical School website hms.harvard.edu

About the author: Robert Waldinger is a psychologist and psychoanalyst.